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South Africa’s present, and future, nuclear waste problem

Nuclear waste is going nowhere slowly Mail & Guardian 03 OCT 2014 ANSIE VICENTE, SARAH WILD  Generations from now, there will still be no-go areas storing radioactive by-products of nuclear power production. In 300 years, South Africa’s Vaalputs nuclear waste site – a 10 000ha reserve in the dusty Northern Cape – will be opened for unrestricted use. Until then, it needs to be guarded and monitored; no small feat considering that if the 1820 British settlers had buried nuclear waste on their arrival, we would still be guarding the site.

About 100km from the town of Springbok, a warm wind raises dust from the ground, which has not seen rain in many months. Eight metres underground, concrete and metal drums containing low- and medium-level nuclear waste are biding their time, as the natural and sparse shrubbery reclaims the surface of the trenches they were buried in.

This is one of the major question marks over nuclear technology: What do we do with the waste?……….

the urgent question posed at the scientific forum in Vienna was what to do with the more dangerous high-level waste. For South Africa, with its plans to build a nuclear fleet to generate an additional 9 600MW of electricity, about 23% of the country’s power requirements, this issue is even more pressing.

Koeberg and Pelindaba’s high-level nuclear waste remains on site and is not moved. According to South Africa’s 2011 report to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, “used fuel from the Koeberg nuclear power station is currently stored in authorised used fuel pools on the site as well as in casks designed and constructed for storage of used fuel”………

“it is recognised that the current storage capacity at the Koeberg and Pelindaba sites [is] finite and the practice of storing used fuel on a reactor site is not sustainable indefinitely”.

So what will happen to the nuclear waste from the country’s proposed 9 600MW nuclear build?

Storage ‘pools’,…..

As Carl-Magnus Larsson, the chief executive of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, said: “We must remember that storage is an interim solution until final management and disposal … it remains a temporary measure.”….http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-02-nuclear-waste-is-going-nowhere-slowly/

October 6, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | South Africa, wastes