nuclear-news

The deep underground disposal of nuclear wastes

“Nuclear waste disposal in geological formations appropriately selected and designed is the least bad concept,” said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear waste expert and head of the U.S.-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
“Other solutions are so much worse that they have, rightly in my opinion, been ruled out,” he said.

Europe makes big bets on nuclear waste burial By Terhi Kinnunen  and Muriel Boselli EURAJOKI, Finland/BURE, France   Jun 13, 2012   (Reuters) – On a small Finnish island and deep in remote rural France, far from the debates and doubts that followed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, the ground work is underway for a commitment to atomic power for the long term – the very long term.

The problem is disposal of nuclear waste, at present mostly done at surface level. Finland, France and Sweden plan to build the world’s first permanent storage sites hundreds of meters underground.

Finland has already started to build Onkalo, which is designed to take
waste over a period of 100 years and then store it for at least
100,000 years, safe from population, fire, flood and other risks.
France plans a similar project in Bure in the country’s east.

Several options for dealing with nuclear waste have been studied in
the past three decades, including shooting it to the sun, burying in
the Arctic and storing it subsea.

“Nuclear waste disposal in geological formations appropriately selected and designed is the least bad concept,” said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear waste expert and head of the U.S.-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
“Other solutions are so much worse that they have, rightly in my opinion, been ruled out,” he said.
But given the long-term horizons involved, geological storage also
carries risks that are hard to calculate.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated the total
amount of discharged spent nuclear fuel to have risen to around
345,000 metric tons (380297 tons) in 2010, up 50 percent from a decade
earlier.

“Since radioactive material in storage will remain hazardous for many
thousands of years, maintenance — or institutional control — would be
required for such periods of time or until permanent disposal is
implemented,” the IAEA said in a report.

In the past 1,000 years alone, an institution would have had to
survive the fall of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, plague, scores of
revolutions and dictatorships and two World Wars.

Environmentalists in Finland say it’s unclear how secure Onkalo, in
southwest Finland some 230 km from Helsinki, will be centuries from
now, with the risks that climate and seismic shifts could allow waste
to leak out and contaminate ground water……
PROGRESS IN FINLAND

Construction workers at Onkalo have nearly finished the 5 km tunnel
that will spiral down to a depth of about 400 meters to a network of
repositories that will start storing waste from 2020.

Posiva, owned by Finnish utilities Fortum and Teollisuuden Voima, is
due to apply for its final stage of construction this year. Its total
costs are estimated at 3.3 billion euros ($4.1 billion)…….
Onkalo took its lead from a similar project in Sweden, where the
schedule has slipped. The Forsmark disposal site there is now due to
start storage around 2025.

NUCLEAR FRANCE YET TO START BUILDING

France plans to start storing waste underground from 2025 at Bure, in
a remote and picturesque part of eastern France, chosen for its thick
layers of argillite rock and low population density.

Construction has not yet begun on the storage facility, and the French
project is still subject to public debate. Work on the industrial site
is due to start in 2017……
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-nuclear-waste-idUSBRE85C0YM20120613

June 14, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, wastes