Safety Assessment Review Group
The Safety Assessment Review Group reviews and analyzes the approach, methods, data and criteria used to conduct safety assessments, ensuring consistency with international best practices.
Overview
Members of the SARG
The SARG is composed of four internationally recognized experts from Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The members have extensive multidisciplinary international experience in areas relevant to the safety assessment and safety case development of deep geological repositories in both crystalline and sedimentary rock formations.
SARG members, from left to right: Paul Smith, Lucy Bailey, Johan Andersson (chair), Graham Smith.
Dr. Johan Andersson
Dr. Johan Andersson, chair of the SARG, is an independent consultant and senior advisor on projects for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Joint Programme on Radioactive Waste Management, as well as for the nuclear waste management organizations in Canada, Czechia, Japan, the U.K., Finland and Switzerland. He has over 35 years of experience in work related to the geological disposal of radioactive waste. Until 2019, he was head of the Unit of Analysis in the Department of Nuclear Fuel at the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB). In this position, he was responsible for technology development related to SKB’s planned repository for used nuclear fuel. He also had a leading role in meetings and interactions with the public, explaining fundamentals of nuclear waste repository safety.
Lucy Bailey
Until May 2026, Lucy Bailey was Chief of Disposal Safety at Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) in the U.K., leading the technical guidance and assurance of all safety case work at NWS, including for the U.K.’s planned deep geological repository for high-level waste and the existing shallow disposal facility for low-level waste. Bailey is now an independent consultant with over 30 years’ experience in the safety assessment of radioactive waste, specializing in the development of sound safety case approaches that aid communication. As well as delivering the U.K.’s generic Disposal System Safety Case, she has been an independent peer reviewer of the Swedish safety case, facilitated safety case discussions with stakeholders in the Swiss disposal program and participated in IAEA expert missions for Belgium, Ukraine and China. She has a long-standing involvement with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency and was the chair of the Integration Group for the Safety Case from 2015 to 2021.
Graham Smith
Graham Smith is an Adjunct Research Professor at Clemson University in South Carolina and is a member of a U.K. government advisory body, the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment. He has over 40 years of experience in radiation protection, including the safety and security of radioactive waste. Smith has also been a consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency, contributing to the development of standards, guidance and technical documents on all aspects of radioactive waste safety and security. He has provided key technical input on and co-ordination of international programs on radiological assessment, including BIOPROTA and the European Commission’s BIOCLIM project.
Dr. Paul Smith
Dr. Paul Smith has over 40 years of experience in mathematical modelling, safety assessment and safety case development, including 35 years in work related to the geological disposal of radioactive waste. He has assisted in the co-ordination of major safety case projects in Switzerland and Finland and has also participated in a wide range of technical work related to safety assessment for other repository programs in Europe, North America and Asia. Dr Smith has also participated in several international working groups and projects for the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency.
