Technical Meeting on Multi-criteria Decision Making for the Selection of Decommissioning Technologies

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a structured approach used to support the selection of decommissioning strategies by evaluating multiple, often conflicting factors. In the context of nuclear facility decommissioning, MCDM enables decision-makers to systematically compare options based on factors such as technical feasibility, cost, safety, environmental impact, and stakeholder concerns. By incorporating both quantitative data and qualitative judgments, MCDM helps ensure transparent, balanced, and well-informed decisions aligned with regulatory requirements, sustainability goals, and long-term site objectives.

MCDM supports decisions in the various stages of decommissioning process; this includes the definition of decommissioning strategies (immediate dismantling or deferred dismantling), identification of decommissioning scenarios and end-states, selection of technologies for characterization, decontamination, segmenting, waste management, supporting deployment systems and other related aspects.

The expected outputs of the Technical Meeting will be:

• Overview of the use of MCDM for the selection of decommissioning technologies and proven practices for different nuclear facilities including power reactors, fuel cycle facilities, and research reactors.
• Outline of the policy guidelines for the use of MCDM in decommissioning.
• Summary of different MCDM tools, sets of factors and limitations, including sustainability and circular economy.
• Discussed considerations on update/development of the IAEA publication on the topic (with a reference to NE Series report No. NW-T-2.1 published in 2011)

The IAEA encourages participants to give presentations on the work of their respective institutions that falls under the topics listed above.