nuclear-news

Desperate international quest for nuclear waste disposal

Nuclear nations wrestle with problem of permanent waste storage CANADA.COM BY IAN MACLEOD, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 20, 2011 Ottawa Citizen With more than 400 nuclear power plants in 32 countries, nuclear waste disposal is no longer an afterthought. A global nuclear waste race is underway.

International research and co-operation has exploded. So has public decision-making in the once-private affairs of the nuclear power industry. Deep underground burial in hard rock cavities for hundreds of thousands of years is now considered the best long-term solution for the 240,000 tonnes of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel stacked in temporary storage around the globe.

No nation yet has opened a permanent geological repository. But plans are well advanced in some countries, notably Finland and Sweden. Canada plans to open a deep repository for high-level waste around 2035, though much work lies ahead, including finding a suitable site. Transferring the estimated four million spent fuel bundles into the vault will take an additional 30 years.

The United States, meanwhile, is in an increasingly desperate situation. The Obama administration’s recent decision to cancel the 2015 opening of a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada’s remote desert country has left jittery and angry American nuclear power producers sitting on enormous amounts of spent fuel crammed into interim storage for an indefinite additional period. The country’s 104 commercial power reactors churn out more every day……..

The biggest issue for any repository design is assessing how it will perform far into future to allow the spent fuel products to decay into harmlessness. No one alive today, or for generations to come, will ever know the answer – hopefully. That means extensive, lengthy and expensive scientific studies. In geology alone, where time scales are measured in billions of years, research requires time.

There’s also hydrology, thermohydrology, hydrogeology, geochemistry, climate change modelling, materials behaviour, radionuclide migration and much, much more. Paying for the repositories is far simpler. Most countries, Canada included, require the radioactive waste producers to finance all the multibillion-dollar costs… http://www.canada.com/Nuclear+nations+wrestle+with+problem+permanent+waste+storage/5889554/story.html

December 21, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, wastes