nuclear-news

Like the other nuclear powers, China wants to put a dirty great radioactive waste dump on indigenous land.

China’s $422m underground lab will probe massive national nuclear waste dump in remote Gansu, Global Construction Review, 

9 April 2021 | By GCR Staff 

China will spend $422m building an underground laboratory to find a way of storing high-level radioactive waste from the country’s growing fleet of nuclear power plants deep underground.

If successful, a repository that could store a hundred years worth of strontium-90, cesium-137 and plutonium-239 istopes will be built.

Building just the lab itself will be a feat. Wang Ju, vice-president of the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology, told the China Daily newspaper that it would be sited in granite 560m below ground in the Beishan region of Gansu province, in China’s remote northwest .  …………..

The offices and laboratories on the surface will have a floor area of 2.4ha within a 247ha site, however the underground complex will require the excavation of 514,200 cubic metres, along with 13.4km of tunnels. At present work is under way on supporting infrastructure, such as paved roads.

The lab, which was listed as a major scientific project in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), will take seven years to build. If its research proves successful, a long-term underground repository for high-level waste will be added nearby by 2050…….. https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/chinas-422m-underground-lab-will-probe-massive-nat/

April 10, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, wastes