Sweden Starts Building 100,000 Year Storage Site For Spent Nuclear Fuel 85
Sweden has begun constructing a long-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, making it only the second country after Finland to build such a site. It is not expected to be completed until the 2080s, but once finished, it will securely house radioactive waste for up to 100,000 years. Reuters reports: The Forsmark final repository, about 150 kilometers north of Stockholm on Sweden's east coast, will consist of 60 km of tunnels buried 500 meters down in 1.9 billion year old bedrock. It will be the final home for 12,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, encased in 5 meter long, corrosion-resistent copper capsules that will be packed in clay and buried. The facility will take its first waste in the late 2030s but will not be completed until around 2080 when the tunnels will be backfilled and closed, Sweden's Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) said. [...]
The Forsmark repository will cost around 12 billion crowns($1.08 billion) and be paid for by the nuclear industry, SKB said. It will have room to hold all the waste produced by Sweden's nuclear power plants. However, it will not hold fuel from future reactors. Sweden plans to build 10 more reactors by 2045.
The Forsmark repository will cost around 12 billion crowns($1.08 billion) and be paid for by the nuclear industry, SKB said. It will have room to hold all the waste produced by Sweden's nuclear power plants. However, it will not hold fuel from future reactors. Sweden plans to build 10 more reactors by 2045.
link broken (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
We do need to store this waste. Even if we had the technology, developed a commercial scale, that you suggest it would not be able to consume all of the waste that we have generated over the last 50 years all at once. So we would need somewhere to put it till this new technology could use it.
My guess would be that this form of 100k year storage is still cost competitive compared to onsite storage that we have been using for years.
Re: (Score:1)
If Musk were to reopen Yucca Mountain right after taking office this week, that facility would be the US storage buffer we need while we build a reprocessing facility on the same Nevada Test Site.
If we're going to unite behind the science on climate change, we have to follow all of the science, not just the parts of it cherry-picked by your favorite brain-damaged teenager.
Re:link broken (Score:4, Insightful)
GP's link works fine and isn't as industry shill site.
Sweden isn't going to build 10 new reactors by 2045. It's already too late, given that the only builder (EDF) is quoting 20 years after all approvals are done, and isn't in any position to take 10 new orders right now.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, because it is not the damn link that is broken, but the route to the host.
Stupid idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
My internet connection, nor the internet connection of the your parent you insulted, has anything to do with it.
I get a VPN because a single link is broken, that will be fixed in a few minutes ??? Why? Ordering a VPN and doing the credit card processing takes longer than "fixing the link". Oh, not that link ... the other link ...
Seriously: I suggest to read up all the techno terms you used, and actually start grasping what they mean.
And on top of that: get a course in ethics and moral. Manners and behaviour
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Then learn how the internet works.
Stupid idiot?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
He probably was an internet illiterate?
And you are still an idiot.
Accusing one for lying, because you can not "grasp his problem" - is pretty arsine behaviour.
I for my part did not check what was wring with the link.
I just checked a few minutes later again.
So, he is a liar ... and you are an idiot. I guess I team up with that liar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Actinides have not much to do with "nuclear waste",
Huh? Radioactive actinides are indeed a significant component of nuclear waste.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q... [duckduckgo.com]
(sorry about posting as AC-- moderated here earlier [but not this thread].)
Re: link broken (Score:2)
Dear Sweden,
we learned about your new 100 000 year storage site for spent fuel. We, you ask? Who is we? We are commenters of the website slashdot, stuff for nerds, stuff that matters. We are really good with computers and tech stuff. But of course, our talents are much broader. After a bit of debate, we concluded that this storage site is a bad idea and we want to warn you not to spend further money on it. I have added a link to our discussion so you can let your
Re: (Score:2)
With my modifications.
Which means that this discussion is in pretty much the state of every technical report on the question which any government has commissioned. Leaving the big problem to be the political one of getting the politicians (and their string-pullers) to come to some sort of agreement.
This is why I think that all Nuclear Waste Repositories should have their entrances through the buildings of t
Re: (Score:2)
Considering the long timescales involved, the general design is to allow removal of the stored material at a later date, for whatever reason - which includes your "someone developed a waste-burning reactor system option.
When they say "copper capsules ... embedded in clay and concrete", you'd be talking about a moveable metal-coated capsule, which you move into a tunnel on a truck, roll onto a bed of loose clay [repeat for appropriate number of capsules]; pack as much space
Re: (Score:2)
Shhhhh... the location is secret.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's a top secret nuclear storage warehouse, staffed by top men [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Finland decided in 2015 to use the same method as Sweden, with storage in copper capsules, and other countries considering it. Canada is leaning toward storage in larger copper capsules. France is working on reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which still requires some storage. While Japan and UK are looking at storage below the sea, for which it is easier to get acceptance.
Re: (Score:2)
And in the USA they don't give a shit what happens more than a couple of decades from now, let alone thousands of years.
Re: (Score:1)
And in the USA they don't give a shit what happens more than a couple of decades from now
In America, waste is stored on-site at each power plant.
For now, that isn't a bad solution. As the waste sits, it becomes less radioactive.
We need to move the waste to long-term storage eventually, but that will be easier, cheaper, and safer in a few decades when technology has improved.
Procrastination is sometimes the best policy.
Re:link broken (Score:4, Informative)
Storing waste on site is the worst possible thing you can do. It means literally building individual storage systems for each site instead of doing it once and managing it properly. An even better option is reprocessing, and the more your procrastinate the bigger the problem gets.
Waste storage is a problem all over America. It's not procrastination or good policy, it's a political inability to solve a problem that has tried to be solved over and over again.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, there is always worse possible. The storage pools of nuclear plants are already good for decades, and above ground casks are relatively very cheap and easy to monitor.
Nah, there is always worse possible (Score:2)
Yeah, they could store it on the dark side of the moon, and when it blows up, it would blow the moon out of orbit, and into interstellar space, past other solar systems, and even into (and through) a black hole...
Re: (Score:2)
Unless I'm wrong, if something would blow up on the dark side of the Moon that would tend to push it toward us, not into interstellar space.
Woosh! (Score:2)
I guess smooth wombat never saw Space 1999
Re: (Score:2)
Whether that put the Moon onto an Earth-intersecting trajectory or not would depend on whether the Moon was in a waxing or a waning phase at the time of detonation.
(Yes, I do recognise Space 1999. I was never terribly impressed with it as a child when it was new. Cool spacecraft though.)
Re: (Score:2)
Storing waste on site is the worst possible thing you can do.
Cool, I'm going to use nuclear waste to make baby strollers, bed frames, sports helmets and ... wait, why are you laughing?
(Challenge accepted.)
Re: (Score:2)
Dad's pre-war stock of un-depleted uranium chemicals, sealed into glass ampoules, went into my home-brew to provide a little extra genetic "oomph" to the yeast under increasing environmental stress from rising et
Re: (Score:2)
Storing waste on site is the worst possible thing you can do. It means literally building individual storage systems for each site instead of doing it once and managing it properly. An even better option is reprocessing, and the more your procrastinate the bigger the problem gets.
Waste storage is a problem all over America. It's not procrastination or good policy, it's a political inability to solve a problem that has tried to be solved over and over again.
Look into the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site as an example of political inability to solve this problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This site was first picked for nuclear waste disposal back in 1987, since then we've seen Democrats holding up progress towards any waste getting to this perfectly viable site. Some progress gets made once Republicans are in control of government, then when the Democrats take over funding stops, with no funding for maintaining the site then rust and decay sets in which
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear waste is hazardous to health for 10,000 years according to the EPA. In the US there were plans for long term storage in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. That was stopped, and later Trump said he would finance an investigation, which never happened.
Now a US law states that long term storage is the responsibility of the state, which now has to pay the power companies for s
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. Can you say "corrosion-resistant" and "copper" in the same sentence? From personal observation copper isn't resistant to corrosion at all.
I'm sure there must be more suitable materials to use.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
From personal observation copper isn't resistant to corrosion at all.
From personal observation of copper plumbing I'd call copper quite corrosion resistant. I'll see copper pipes that are nearly 100 years old but look almost new.
I'm sure there must be more suitable materials to use.
You mean like gold? Gold is famous for it's resistance to corrosion but that's a lot more expensive compared to copper. On the balance between corrosion resistance and cost I'd think copper is a very cromulent option.
Re: (Score:2)
Were you breathing while you were observing this copper?
Was the copper exposed to the vicious oxidising agent in the air that is oxygen? The component which you're daily exposed to about 1/8th of your personal lethal dose of?
The long term part of the storage plan is to have the copper caskets buried in clay, sealed behind a concrete wall, at the end of a tunnel whose ventilation you've removed, down a mine whose ventilation is directed t
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear waste is hazardous to health for 10,000 years according to the EPA.
CItation needed.
Re: link broken (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Subduction zones usually lead to volcanoes. Sure, only a tiny fraction of the subducted crust ends up spewing back up to the surface, but I don't fancy volcanic ash that's been laced with nuclear waste!
Re: (Score:2)
I don't fancy volcanic ash that's been laced with nuclear waste!
I have some bad news [nasa.gov] for you.... Yes, yes, that's not "nuclear waste" but it does suggest that your fears are wildly overblown.
Re: (Score:2)
Subduction zones usually lead to volcanoes.
Yes, but with a delay of millions of years. Nuclear waste is safe enough to hold in your hand after 10,000 years. In a few million, it will be safe to eat (at least in terms of radiation, not heavy metal toxicity).
Subduction disposal is stupid, but for different reasons.
Subduction moves at about 2 centimeters per year, so in 10,000 years, it will have moved ... 200 meters.
So why not just drill a 200-meter hole in someone's backyard instead? Then, you don't need a ship.
Re: link broken (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Slow handclap, for having remembered your school geography.
Now, can you remember, from the same sources, if the diagrams included a scale? Probably not. So let's take some figures. From Fuji-san (overlooking Tokyo) to the adjacent section of the Japan Trench is 200km. The spreading (well, closing) rate is approximately 6cm/year. I don't have the inclination of the Japan Trench subduction zone, but 45Â (degrees ; 0.7 radians) is a good working guess. So the dis
Re: (Score:2)
More detail down thread, in other replies to this silly trope.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a mixed bag. On-site storage increases the risk of contamination should something (Eg a fire) break out at the plant. Since most reactors are built next to a water source for convenience, and not piped miles away, that means that contamination then runs down river.
Off-site storage, then has the problem of potential hazards in the shipping. So if you can wait long enough for the material to be less dangerous to handle, you stick it in some kind of container that can be moved by truck. If you don't wait
Re: (Score:3)
The most impressive thing is that they can build it for a billion Euro. It might still overrun, but for example the UK couldn't even do a feasibility study for that much.
Re: (Score:2)
If you do your geological engineering correctly, building out under the sea isn't a big deal. Building an entrance out at sea is harder, but for a coastal location you only have to deal with a semicircle of NIMBYs, not a full circle, so bribery (sorry, "local employment") is cheaper.
The coal- and metal- (haematite) mines adjacent to the Sellafield (Calder Hall, Windscale, Seascales ; they change the site name every major fire or leak) site in the
Re: (Score:3)
I guess the link did not last 100,000 years.
Seems optimistic. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Five-hundred years would still be a couple hundred more than probably needed.
Only thing optimistic here is the size.
First rule of barn building; make it twice the size you were planning. Then double it again.
It will have room to hold all the waste produced by Sweden's nuclear power plants. However, it will not hold fuel from future reactors. Sweden plans to build 10 more reactors by 2045.
They’re not even making it large enough for their own future reactors. Dumb. Just dumb.
Re: (Score:2)
They’re not even making it large enough for their own future reactors. Dumb. Just dumb.
By 2045, we'll have thorium MSRs, and the "waste" will become "fuel".
Re: (Score:2)
They’re not even making it large enough for their own future reactors. Dumb. Just dumb.
By 2045, we'll have thorium MSRs, and the "waste" will become "fuel".
2045? Really? I take it the builders applied for the red tape permits a decade ago to break ground by then?
We have plenty of nuclear solutions. Even today. We refuse to fix the larger problem brought by Greed N. Corruption that literally works to prevent nuclear from being a solution for us. This red tape will become even more expensive as the solar and wind mafias grow and demand their cut.
we know a hole in the ground is good enough (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The Greens are deeply upset by the Laws of Thermodynamics and want to see them rep
I remain skeptic (Score:3)
No about building the excavation. It can be done for sure.
$1.08 billion?
Sounds like lots of projected costs of nuclear industry. Way below the real numbers.
Uranium comes from the ground (Score:2)
If people are so bothered about spent fuel then mix it down to the same concentrations it was dug up at and re-bury it. Obviously this doesn't apply to plutonium which is artificially created but modern reactors don't create it anyway.
Re:Uranium comes from the ground (Score:4, Informative)
2.8 parts per million.
You want to bury 2.8 tonnes of ordinary (unrefined) uranium, you need to "mix it" with one million tonnes of rock.
And that's not including that it would still be above baseline because the baseline IS 2.8 parts per million in just ordinary rock.
"It will be the final home for 12,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel"
Ignoring that nuclear fuel is far more radioactive than naturally occuring uranium - that's 4,285,714,285 - 4 billion ton of rock.
You'd probably be looking at "mixing" it with upwards of 20 billion - 100 billion tons of rock. More than the total annual consumption of all resources of the entire human race.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could mix it with a few trillion tons of seawater. Just a thought. Anyone seen any negative effects in the pacific ocean after Fukashima? No, didn't think so.
Re: (Score:2)
The water released from Fukushima has been decontaminated. It has higher-than-normal levels of deuterium and tritium, but the other contaminants have been removed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not worried. I was just pointing out the disingenuity of Viol8's claim that experience from Fukushima shows that diluting nuclear waste with seawater is safe. They've been very careful to filter all the really dangerous stuff out of the water (with ion exchange, etc.) before slowly releasing it into the ocean. Separating the hydrogen isotopes just isn't practical.
That aside, deuterium isn't completely harmless. Heavy water has slightly different properties to regular water when it comes to osmosis a
Re: (Score:2)
Half-life 13.6 years.
Literally, Fukushima tritium is half the problem today that it was when the reactors were melting down.
Re: (Score:2)
I've always said that we should build reactors on oil rig platforms far out at sea.
Normal operation - no different.
Huge source of available cooling water (but you'd have to process it, obviously)
Have a problem? Drop the entire core into the ocean.
Sure, it would irradiate a couple of hundred metres around it, so you turn the oil rig into a big warning sign and leave it in place.
Water is a far better solution - that's why even in the underground waste storage facilities in the US, you have divers maintaining
Re: (Score:2)
(My experience base : 30 years, about 50 installations and 155 wells.)
For a start, the deck load of a "typical" oil rig is a few 10s of thousand tonnes. Maximum. for most, the variable deck load is a few thousand tonnes, and all the rest is structural steelwork to support the variable bits in place for each one that is in use now, but needs to be replaced with the next item when it's job is done.
Building a platform on top of a jacket (the normal structure ; there are va
Re: (Score:2)
Its spent because the enrichment decreases due to use. Seems like the best option is to pulverize and send to be enriched again. Uranium is not exactly super abundant. If 30% of the U-235 in the fuel rods is unused, it seems a waste to set it aside and let it decay. It seems like it would be better utilized. Hell even if you didnt refine it back to reactor grade enrichment you could still use it to convert Thorium to U-233 as starter for thorium reactors.
Re: (Score:2)
U-235 has a half life of 700My, U-238 4+Gy. They are so low level radioactive that they are not dangerous at the concentrations found in the ground in most places. The stuff that comes out of the reactor has a much higher activity and would definitely not be safe to "just bury it in the ground", particularly if there is any chance of it leaching into ground water.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there somewhere where the concentration of radioactive minerals in the ground is high enough to be dangerous?
I'm asking as exactly the sort of geologist who is already packing his bags to go there, and get myself some samples.
I've never heard of such. And I had lecturers who worked on uranium mineralisation prospects in the Arctic, so we had plenty of "hot" rocks in the Department coll
55 years? (Score:2)
Re:55 years? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The way I read that schematic, their TBM will need to dig the "backbone" of the first "comb", then come back up that tunnel, digging the actual storage storage tunnels ("comb"). (That suggests, to me, using a slightly larger diameter "shield" for the "backbone" than the storage tunnels. No, on second thoughts, you'd use 2 different TBMS, so if one breaks down, you can continue making progress with the other. Hopefully interchangeable parts between the two.)
Build the first "backbone" and "comb"
Benefits of Slow Bureaucracy (Score:2)
So, 2080 you say? (Score:2)
That sounds like the usual deeply evil "let future generations pay" mode most of the nuclear industry likes to use to hide its real costs.
Re: (Score:3)
2080 is when it's shutting down.
sheer vanity (Score:2)
100,000 years. Check back with me in 1000 years.
short-sighted (Score:2)
Instead of locking it away, it would be much wiser to invest in making burner reactor that consume the waste they have. Whoever came up with the "we can lock it away forever" concept is a fool that has convinced their fellow fools that this is a good idea.