nuclear-news

Safety analysis is not yet approved for Sweden’s nuclear waste dump plan, despite the hype.

Sweden’s Land and Environmental Court has granted SKB an environmental permit to build and operate the DGR for nuclear fuel waste …. almost.

This is the last step in the licensing process, and while a political approval had already been issued, this permit from the Lands and Environment Court was still outstanding, and so we were still on sound ground saying that there was no “approved and operating deep geological repository anywhere in the world” (Finland has constructed the underground workings, but still is in the early or mid-stages of the review of their operating license).

Now SKB has “granted” the permit, but there are still two more steps: the Uppsala County administrative board has to approve a “control program”, which sounds from this article like it might be the rough equivalent of the CNSC “License to Prepare a Site” (but it might not be! that’s my speculation based on this description).

The larger point is that “Before SKB can start on the actual mining of the repository tunnels, an approved safety analysis report is required from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority.”

So, in summary, it seems that the permit has been granted, but the safety analysis report has not been approved, so there is still – as of this moment – still no “approved and operating deep geological repository anywhere in the world”. 

Given that the detail of the approval of the safety analysis report might not get media coverage (even nuclear industry media coverage) we’d probably be on sounder ground to now simply say that “there is no operating DGR anywhere in the world, and therefore no operating experience the nuclear industry can point to”.

November 4, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Sweden, wastes