nuclear-news

France’s expensive battle to manage nuclear wastes

they need to stop making the stuff

How France is disposing of its nuclear waste,  4  March By Rob Broomby British Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Service Half a kilometre below ground in the Champagne-Ardenne region of eastern France, near the village of Bure, a network of tunnels and galleries is being hacked out of the 160 million-year-old compacted clay rocks.

Half a kilometre below ground in the Champagne-Ardenne region of eastern France, near the village of Bure, a network of tunnels and galleries is being hacked out of the 160 million-year-old compacted clay rocks.

The dusty subterranean science laboratory built by the French nuclear waste agency Andra is designed to find out whether this could be the final resting place for most of France’s highly radioactive waste, the deadly remains of more than half a century of nuclear energy.

Emerging from the industrial lift there are a series of passageways about the size of an underground rail tunnel.

The walls are reinforced with steel ribs and sprayed with grey concrete and there are huge bore holes drilled 100m into the rock walls which would hold the capsules of radioactive waste. If the scheme gets the final approval, the first waste could be inserted here in around 10 years.

France generates around three quarters of its electricity from nuclear power but despite decades of activity it is no nearer a solution to the perils of nuclear waste.

Many countries agree the hazardous material – some of it at temperatures of 90C – has to be disposed of deep below ground where it can be isolated from all living things for tens of thousands of years whilst the radiation slowly reduces.

Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository.

“What we did first was to demonstrate that safety can be achieved through a repository in this clay formation,” says Gerald Ouzounian, the head of international affairs for Andra, told Costing the Earth on BBC Radio 4.

Technical test

Since 2006, they have been developing experiments to prove they can do it technically. Equipment has been set up to simulate the heat the waste will generate and to monitor the impact on the clay.

“There are still risks of water ingress especially from the shafts and the top,” says Mr Ouzounian, so they are testing ways to seal the waste using a bentonite clay plug.

French law requires companies to build a retrievable scheme, meaning that for the first few hundred years at least, they can remove the waste again should future generations find a better way to get rid of it.

But it is above ground that the real battle is taking place…….http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26425674

March 5, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized