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 The world has 270,000 tonnes of used fuel stockpiled, much of it
under water in ponds at nuclear power stations, adding to the
urgency of finding a permanent storage solution for material that
can remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.
Finland and Sweden hope to be the first countries in the world to be
able to put the most dangerous high-level waste (HLW) into
underground storage in the next decade, using a new technology to
encase fuel rods and protect them from erosion.
At a conference in Vienna this week, the 164-nation International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) heard updates from the Finish and
Swedish authorities on their model solution.
Finland stopped exporting spent fuel for reprocessing to the then
Soviet Union in 1996, and does not accept imports.
For years, Finland has been building a deep underground spent fuel
repository, some 450 meters (492 yards) below the surface in the
granite bedrock, at Onkalo, on its west coast.
It uses a technology known as KBS-3, developed by Sweden's SKB,
which involves the rods being encased in copper containers, then
packed into absorbent bentonite clay which swells when wet, sealing
off the package from corrosive elements.
The operator, Posiva, which is owned by utilities TVO [POHVOT.UL]
and Fortum, hopes it can become operational from around 2022.
Authorities knew that public acceptance was crucial and sought local
approval for the 3 billion euro ($3.38 billion) repository, which
can hold 9,000 tonnes of HLW from the nearby Olikluoto and Loviisa
reactors.
And in February Finland's nuclear regulator STUK issued a safety
assessment, which backed the project.
"The population has a high trust in regulators and policymakers,"
STUK inspector Jussi Heinonen told Reuters by phone ahead of the
IAEA conference.
PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE
Other countries keen to persuade their populations of the merits of
nuclear power, such as Britain with its new Hinkley Point C plant
project, are likely to take encouragement if the Scandinavians are
successful.
Across the Baltic Sea, Sweden is working on a similar project at
Oskarshamn. The legal permissioning process lags that of Finland,
with a recommendation to the government possible in 2017 and then a
10-year construction period.
"A realistic time for operating a facility is at the end of the
2020s," said Christopher Eckerberg, managing director of SKB, which
is owned by Vattenfall [VATN.UL], German E.ON and Fortum.
"The critical part is public acceptance."
MKG, a Swedish non-governmental organization working on nuclear
waste, has serious questions. The most controversial issue is if
water molecules, and not only oxygen, react directly with the copper
surface, said its director Johan Swahn.
"If this is the case, it will be difficult to prove a safety case
for 100,000 years," he said.
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HLW - the most toxic type of nuclear waste, which accounts for 10
percent of total volumes - is not safe to handle at all for 40 to 50
years until it cools, which has allowed the question of what to do
with it to be put off, until now.
The IAEA is fully aware that waste held in surface level storage
poses great risks, leaving it more exposed to floods, terrorism,
earthquakes, climate change or human error.
"Waste won't go away after reactors are turned off," said Stefan
Mayer, team leader of the IAEA's waste technology section. "If we
can provide socially and politically accepted approaches, we can
implement solutions."
Countries such as Germany which have opted to abandon nuclear power
still have waste to handle.
Some 200 reactors, nearly half those currently operating worldwide,
will be phased out between now and 2040, requiring deconstruction
and disposing of spent fuel.
The decision-making process in Germany has been hampered after plans
in the 1970s to turn an interim storage in salt formations in Lower
Saxony's Gorleben into a final repository were scuppered by mass
protests.
COSTS
The OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency says it is impossible to gauge the
future costs of storage sites, because each country's geography is
different and there are no previous projects to serve as examples.
The European Union is trying to speed up thinking on the issue by
demanding that member countries submit by August individual plans on
how to deal with waste.
France hopes for success with its Cigeo project at Bure in a
sparsely populated part of the country's east, which has thick
layers of argilite clay rock.
A final investment decision could be due around 2020 and an
industrial pilot phase could then be ready to start in 2025.
Switzerland has identified two areas, Zurich Northeast and Jurassic
East, to be investigated as possible sites.
(additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris and Jussi Rosendahl in
Helsinki, editing by David Evans)
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