In Canada, liquid radioactive waste is regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act. Management follows a concentrate-and-contain or delay-and-decay strategy depending on the activity level and isotope half-lives present:
Volume reduction/concentration — ion exchange, evaporation, or reverse osmosis concentrates the radioactivity into a much smaller volume, producing a large volume of decontaminated water and a small volume of concentrate.
Delay and decay — for short-half-life isotopes, the concentrate (or the whole waste, for very low activity) is held in engineered storage until its activity decays to a level authorized for release or for less-restrictive disposal.
Solidification — for longer-lived isotopes, the concentrate is immobilized (cementation, bitumenization, or vitrification for high-level waste) into a stable solid form for long-term storage/disposal.
Licensed disposal or authorized discharge — solidified waste goes to a CNSC-licensed waste management facility; treated water may be discharged only if its activity is below CNSC-authorized release limits, confirmed by monitoring.
