This is interesting: Finland is building a radioactive waste dump meant to store the stuff safely for at least 100,000 years. They are in the process of building a new nuclear reactor and – rather admirably – their law requires that the waste be dealt with domestically, rather than exported.
I have argued previously that I would feel more comfortable with the construction of new nuclear plants in Canada if the utilities building them also had to build adequate waste storage facilities before the power plants became operational.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
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This summer I saw a documentary about the Onkalo project called ‘Into Eternity’ at HotDocs in Toronto. You should consider watching it. I remember that at least during the festival it could be streamed free online, but that may not be the case any more.
To the next ice age and beyond
How to dispose of nuclear waste
Finland shows the way with a project expected to span 100,000 years
On Nuclear Waste, Finland Shows U.S. How It Can Be Done
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In the United States, spent fuel became the responsibility of the federal government, specifically the Energy Department, subjecting the issue to more political pressures.
At the Onkalo site, workers drill into the bedrock down near the 1,400-foot level, taking cores to study the characteristics of the granite. Above ground, near the curving entrance to the tunnel, construction has begun on a building where the spent fuel, currently cooling in pools at the Olkiluoto reactors, will be readied for burial, handled by remote-controlled machinery since radiation levels will be high. Spent fuel will also eventually be shipped here from Fortum’s reactors, on the country’s southeastern coast.
Kimmo Kemppainen, research manager for the project, said that in characterizing and mapping the rock, it was important to locate, and avoid, fractures where water could flow, since the disposal site was below the water table. But even if water gets near a canister, he said, the clay should form a barrier and keep corrosion of the copper — which could result in a radiation leak — to a minimum, even over tens of thousands of years.
Mr. Kemppainen has worked on the project for 14 years. “My personal opinion is that for this generation that has used nuclear power, at least we should do something about the waste,” he said. “It’s not safe to store it on the surface.”
In the United States, more than 80,000 tons of spent fuel are currently stored on the surface, in pools or dry steel-and-concrete casks, at operating nuclear reactors and at other sites near now-closed plants. The original deadline to have a repository operating by 1998 is long past.