{"id":53028,"date":"2022-08-29T23:14:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T23:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/08\/29\/uk-looks-to-sweden-for-a-solution-to-nuclear-waste\/"},"modified":"2022-08-29T23:14:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T23:14:53","slug":"uk-looks-to-sweden-for-a-solution-to-nuclear-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/08\/29\/uk-looks-to-sweden-for-a-solution-to-nuclear-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"UK looks to Sweden for a solution to nuclear waste"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Decades of highly radioactive nuclear waste lies in deep, amazingly clear, blue-lit ponds some 40 m (130 ft) below the Swedish landscape.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It’s an oddly beautiful and rather disturbing sight. Row upon row of long metal casks filled with spent nuclear fuel from the country’s reactors lie below the surface near Oskarshamn on Sweden’s Baltic Sea coast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is both highly lethal and absolutely safe. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fatal because this material is highly radioactive; safe as it is under 8m of water, a very effective barrier against radiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Waste can thus be stored for decades. Indeed it must be. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Intense radioactivity generates a lot of heat, and this type of material needs to be chilled for a long time before it can be removed for storage. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The question of what to do with it afterwards has occupied many governments, including the British one, for years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The problem isn’t the quantity. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even after around 60 years of commercial and military programmes, the UK stockpile of the most hazardous high-level waste is a few thousand tonnes, although there will also be several hundred thousand tonnes of intermediate-level waste that will also need to be treated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The real problem is time. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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‘Spent fuel is highly radioactive and this radioactivity takes a long time to decay,’ explains Prof Neil Hyatt, senior scientific adviser to the UK’s Nuclear Waste Services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“After about 1,000 years, about 10% of the original radioactivity remains, which will slowly decay over about 100,000 years.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This creates unique difficulties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We cannot rely on institutional control for periods much longer than a few centuries,” says Prof. Hyatt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cThe Roman Empire lasted about 500 years. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

“So the surface of the earth and human civilizations are changing much faster than the rate at which the radioactivity in this spent nuclear fuel can decay.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sweden has already drawn its own conclusions. It plans to bury its waste deep underground in rocks and leave it there forever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is a process known as geological disposal, and the country’s scientists have spent decades studying various ways it might be carried out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Much of the research was carried out at the Aspo Hard Rock Laboratory, a facility built near Oskarshamn in the south of the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hundreds of meters below the surface, a network of huge man-made caves has been dug into the rock. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is used for experiments studying how waste can be packaged and buried, and how the materials used might degrade over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The bedrock here is rugged and flows through salt water – ancient brine that has migrated far up from the Baltic Sea over thousands of years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Such a humid environment would not be suitable for a real repository. But according to Ylva Stenqvist, project manager at the country’s nuclear power plant operator, SKB, it’s perfect for testing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“This side was chosen because it’s quite wet,” she explains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Because if we conduct our experiments in a really dry area, we have to wait forever for any results. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“So we deliberately chose this location to speed up some of the experiments, really put our materials and our methods under stress and see how they hold up in this pretty aggressive environment.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this year, the Swedish government approved plans for a true geological disposal facility (GDF) to be built in Forsmark, some 150 km north of Stockholm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The project is expected to cost about 19 billion Swedish kroner (1.5 billion pounds; $1.8 billion) and create 1,500 jobs, although construction will take decades. Work on a similar project across the Baltic Sea in Finland started in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These developments are being closely monitored from Britain, which also intends to build a GDF, although repeated attempts to find a suitable site have been hampered by political intransigence, as well as fierce opposition from local protesters and environmentalists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Current efforts to find a site and a population willing to host it now follow a \u201cconsent-based\u201d approach, with the government agency Nuclear Waste Services establishing partnerships with local communities to involve them in the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

As an incentive, these communities will be offered a \u00a31m investment in local initiatives when they sign up, with this figure increasing to \u00a32.5m if deep drilling is undertaken.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Four such partnerships have been established since this process began in 2018. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Three are in Cumbria. This includes the stretch of coast where the Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant and many of its workers are already located. The fourth and most recent was founded at Theddlethorpe, Lincolnshire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Scotland is not part of this process and the Scottish Government does not currently support deep geological disposal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even in those areas where partnerships have been built, strong resistance remains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We are vehemently opposed to the geological disposal of hot, heat-generating nuclear waste,” says Marianne Birkby of the Cumbria-based protest group Radiation Free Lakeland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The waste should stay where it can be monitored, repackaged and picked up again if something goes horribly wrong,” she urges. “Underground there would be absolutely no chance of containment if a leak occurred.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

More technology of business:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    \n
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    \n

    A UK GDF location is unlikely to be decided for at least another 15 years. But some experts doubt if it should ever be built.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    Among them is Dr. Paul Dorfman, Associate Fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex and Chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    “Geological disposal is a concept, not a reality,” he explains. “There is significant scientific uncertainty as to whether the materials used can survive the ravages of time.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    He believes that the government’s enthusiasm for new nuclear power plants is the reason they are pushing the construction of a GDF.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    “If you don’t get rid of the garbage, you can’t produce more, which means that the USP of nuclear power – that it’s climate friendly and so on – depends entirely on the idea that you can get rid of that garbage,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    “Unfortunately, geological disposal is actually a nuclear fig leaf.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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