- As Sweden begins decommissioning its nuclear power plants,
time is running out to find a way to make 9,000 tonnes of spent nuclear
fuel safe for the next 100,000 years.
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- The nuclear industry says it has the answer, but environmentalists
dismiss it as old and unsafe technology.
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- A 1980 referendum held in the country decided nuclear
power should be phased out. The first reactor came offline in 1999, the
second this week.
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- The remaining 10 reactors will all be shut down in the
next few years, bringing to an end 40 years of nuclear history.
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- 'Safe for 100,000 years'
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- Some 60m under the sea outside the Forsmark nuclear power
plant just north of Stockholm, I am shown into a complex network of tunnels.
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- This is where contaminated equipment and clothing from
the nearby power plant is stored. But it is also a showroom for what the
industry hopes can be a final solution for a much bigger problem: the highly
radioactive spent fuel.
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- Kai Ahlbom heads the geological research of the bedrock
here, which he thinks would be suitable for permanent storage of the world's
most toxic waste.
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- "This rock is 1,800 million years old. Not much
has happened to this bedrock during that time," Mr Ahlbom explains.
He is confident this geology will not change much for at least another
100,000 years.
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- That is how long spent nuclear fuel remains dangerous
to the environment. It is the responsibility of the nuclear power plant
operators here to make sure their waste remains safe until it is no longer
radioactive.
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- Digging it down
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- The plan is to construct a deposit some 500m underground,
where the fuel can be permanently stored. Today, spent nuclear fuel sits
in temporary storage in the south of the country.
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- "We will encase the waste in 5cm-thick copper canisters,
to protect against corrosion," Mr Ahlbom says.
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- "Then, we want to encase the cylinders in bentonite
clay. It's basically like cat sand; it absorbs humidity very efficiently,
and swells when wet."
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- After all nuclear waste has been stored, the site would
be filled in, and safe enough to be left without human intervention until
the radiation risk has gone, Mr Ahlbom believes.
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- 'Old technology'
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- But environmentalists are not happy with the solution.
Kenneth Gunnarsson, from the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review,
told the BBC News website the waste problem was far from being solved.
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- "No one in the world has a solution. And the Swedish
nuclear industry's solution is an old one they came up with in the 1970s.
This is old technology," he says.
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- The president of Sweden's Society for Nature Conservation,
Mikael Karlsson, agrees, and says the industry for too long has concentrated
on one solution, and has made compromises on safety when its model has
run into problems.
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- "Swedish legislation requires an assessment of alternative
methods and locations, and that is something which the operators have not
conducted yet.
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- "So they won't get any permits from the government
for storing the waste according to their present proposals, if the legislation
is to be followed," he said.
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- But while environmentalists are critical of the industry's
failure to come up with alternative storage solutions, they have yet to
present any alternatives themselves. And time is running out.
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- The temporary storage for spent nuclear fuel was designed
to operate for 40 years. It is already half way through its lifespan.
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- © BBC MMV
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4597589.stm
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