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Where to store Nuclear Waste for hundreds of thousands of years?

politics, and not the welfare of future generations, is at the center of the nuclear waste issue. To protect those generations, a site must be found where radioactive waste can be allowed to slowly decay over hundreds of thousands of years, far away from any living creatures

Germany’s Endless Search for a Nuclear Waste Dump  SPIEGELONLINE 15 Jan 2010 Germany has been looking for a permanent storage site for its nuclear waste for over 30 years. The history of the Gorleben salt dome, a potential nuclear repository, is one full of deception and political maneuvering. And if opponents to the plans have their way, the search might even have to start again from scratch…………..

the industry’s spent fuel rods will have to be disposed of somewhere. Germany’s mountain of radioactive waste, which is growing from one year to the next, cannot be kept in ordinary warehouses forever.

The Germany-based independent expert and research organization GRS, which analyses reactor safety, estimates that German atomic power plants consume about 400 tons of nuclear fuel per year, producing highly toxic waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years. If Germany’s nuclear phase-out continues as planned, at least 17,200 tons of spent fuel rods will have to be disposed of, not to mention the irradiated tubes, filters and parts of the reactor vessels of decommissioned nuclear power plants…………

In the coming years, another 43 containers of highly radioactive waste from two reprocessing plants, La Hague in France and Sellafield in Great Britain, will be brought to the Gorleben depot on ships, trucks and trains. Because the transport of Castor containers had repeatedly been met with heated protests, the former SPD-Green Party government in 2002 ordered the nuclear industry to build interim storage sites for used fuel elements next to nuclear power plants, to reduce the need for shipments. As a result of this policy, a portion of Germany’s radioactive waste is still being kept in 12 of these interim storage buildings, distributed throughout the country, pending the discovery and development of a permanent repository……………

politics, and not the welfare of future generations, is at the center of the nuclear waste issue. To protect those generations, a site must be found where radioactive waste can be allowed to slowly decay over hundreds of thousands of years, far away from any living creatures. This permanent repository will still have to be impervious in the year 8010, not to mention the year 308,010.

The Curse of Gorleben: Germany’s Endless Search for a Nuclear Waste Dump – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

January 17, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes