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Over the past two decades, the safety case has become a powerful and essential tool to support decision making at every stage of a geological disposal programme. Now, an increasing number of national programmes are advancing towards licensing, opening the door to the concrete realisation of their deep geological repository (DGR) for high-level radioactive waste. This achievement marks the culmination of the evolution and periodic updating of the safety case as an iterative process of site characterisation, design development and demonstration, RD&D, safety assessment and integration, generally spanning over multiple decades, accompanied by regulatory reviews and ongoing communication with involved stakeholders. During this process the entire lifecycle of the waste - from its generation to its ultimate disposal - is duly considered. Of particular importance is the embedding of optimisation within the process, so as to achieve safety, technical feasibility, sustainability and to fulfil stakeholder expectations and requirements.

The maturity of the safety case concept as developed by the NEA Integration Group for the Safety Case (IGSC) and national and international programmes has reached a high level, providing the basis to explore new domains, such as gathering and using experience obtained from already-operating repositories for other types of radioactive waste, including insights on operational issues and waste acceptance, as well as transfering the safety case methodologies to other disposal concepts.