The Institute for Safety Research and Reactor Technology (ISR) is dealing with basic research and development tasks concerning the safety of nuclear energy technology and nuclear waste management.

The Institute's research programme is concentrated on two essential tasks:

• investigations into the quality of safety standards of nuclear facilities with the aim of ruling out catastrophic hazards,
• basic application-oriented research on nuclear waste management (characterization, treatment and final disposal of radioactive waste) and on partitioning chemistry for the transmutation of long-lived radionuclides.

Work on advancing the safety of nuclear facilities relates to existing and innoative concepts for reactors, disposal facilities and transmutation plants with the aim of ensuring that no harmful impacts can occur for the population even in the event of extremely unlikely accidents. Analyses and experiments are being performed in support of the self-sustaining integrity of such nuclear facilities.

Work on nuclear waste management is aimed at providing methods and possibilities for the safe recycling or disposal (final storage) of radioactive materials as stipulated by the Atomic Energy Act for the producers of waste. Research is focused on the characterization of radioactive waste, the treatment and storage of radioactive materials and radiochemical investigations into isotope transmutation.

The ISR's R&D work is being performed in two institute areas with two divisions each. The PKS quality control group associated to the ISR assists the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) in performing tasks for the product verification of waste from reprocessing in the United Kingdom and France and of waste from federal German suppliers. On behalf of BfS the quality control group carries out regular inspections at operators and audits with inspectors on site, reviews the documentation of highly radioactive glass canisters prior to their acceptance in the Gorleben interim storage facility and acts as an expert for process qualification.

The Institute has a hot cell facility for chemical analyses of radioactive material and test rigs for the experimental demonstration of inherent safety features of nuclear facilities