Sweden Starts Building 100,000 Year Storage Site For Spent Nuclear Fuel 50
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)
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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.
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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.
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Actinides have not much to do with "nuclear waste", and most of them you can not "burn" in a fission reactor anyway ... trolling again? Or are you really that uneducated?
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Shhhhh... the location is secret.
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Yes, it's a top secret nuclear storage warehouse, staffed by top men [youtube.com].
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.)
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I guess the link did not last 100,000 years.
Seems optimistic. (Score:2)
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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.
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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".
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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)
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.
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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 upwa
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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.
55 years? (Score:2)
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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.
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2080 is when it's shutting down.
sheer vanity (Score:2)
100,000 years. Check back with me in 1000 years.