High-level radioactive waste management

High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive

Radioactive decay

Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...

materials created during production of nuclear power

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

and nuclear warhead

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

s. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive waste

Radioactive waste

Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...

s remain deadly to living organisms. Of particular concern are two long-lived fission product

Long-lived fission product

Long-lived fission products are radioactive materials with a long half-life produced by nuclear fission.-Evolution of radioactivity in nuclear waste:...

s, Technetium-99

Technetium-99

Technetium-99 is an isotope of technetium which decays with a half-life of 211,000 years to stable ruthenium-99, emitting soft beta rays, but no gamma rays....

(half-life 220,000 years) and Iodine-129

Iodine-129

Iodine-129 is long-lived radioisotope of iodine which occurs naturally, but also is of special interest in the monitoring and effects of man-made nuclear fission decay products, where it serves as both tracer and potential radiological contaminant....

(half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent nuclear fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic element

Transuranium element

In chemistry, transuranium elements are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92...

s in spent fuel are Neptunium-237

Isotopes of neptunium

Neptunium is an artificial element, and thus a standard atomic mass cannot be given. Like all artificial elements, it has no stable isotopes...

(half-life two million years) and Plutonium-239

Plutonium-239

Plutonium-239 is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used and is currently the secondary isotope. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in...

(half-life 24,000 years). Consequently, high-level radioactive waste requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it from the biosphere

Biosphere

The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...

. This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management strategy involving permanent storage, disposal or transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.

Governments around the world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, usually involving deep-geologic placement, although there has been limited progress toward implementing long-term waste management solutions. This is partly because the timeframes in question when dealing with radioactive waste

Radioactive waste

range from 10,000 to millions of years, according to studies based on the effect of estimated radiation doses.

Challenges with radioactive waste management

Hannes Alfvén

Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics . He described the class of MHD waves now known as Alfvén waves...

, Nobel laureate in physics, described the as yet unsolved dilemma of high-level radioactive waste management: "The problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage until it decays after hundreds of thousands of years. The geologic deposit must be absolutely reliable as the quantities of poison are tremendous. It is very difficult to satisfy these requirements for the simple reason that we have had no practical experience with such a long term project. Moreover permanently guarded storage requires a society with unprecedented stability."

Thus, Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands of years. As Alfvén suggests, no known human civilization has ever endured for so long, and no geologic formation of adequate size for a permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that has been stable for so long a period. Nevertheless, avoiding confronting the risks associated with managing radioactive wastes may create countervailing risks of greater magnitude. Radioactive waste management is an example of policy analysis that requires special attention to ethical concerns, examined in the light of uncertainty and futurity: consideration of 'the impacts of practices and technologies on future generations'.

There is a debate over what should constitute an acceptable scientific and engineering foundation for proceeding with radioactive waste disposal strategies. There are those who have argued, on the basis of complex geochemical simulation models, that relinquishing control over radioactive materials to geohydrologic processes at repository closure is an acceptable risk. They maintain that so-called “natural analogues” inhibit subterranean movement of radionuclides, making disposal of radioactive wastes in stable geologic formations unnecessary. However, existing models of these processes are empirically underdetermined: due to the subterranean nature of such processes in solid geologic formations, the accuracy of computer simulation models has not been verified by empirical observation, certainly not over periods of time equivalent to the lethal half-lives of high-level radioactive waste. On the other hand, some insist deep geologic repositories in stable geologic formations are necessary. National management plans of various countries display a variety of approaches to resolving this debate.

Researchers suggest that forecasts of health detriment for such long periods should be examined critically. Practical studies only consider up to 100 years as far as effective planning and cost evaluations are concerned. Long term behaviour of radioactive wastes remains a subject for ongoing research. Management strategies and implementation plans of several representative national governments are described below.

Geologic disposal

The process of selecting appropriate permanent repositories for high level waste and spent fuel is now under way in several countries with the first expected to be commissioned some time after 2017. The basic concept is to locate a large, stable geologic formation and use mining technology to excavate a tunnel, or large-bore tunnel boring machine

Tunnel boring machine

A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...

s (similar to those used to drill the Chunnel from England to France) to drill a shaft 500–1,000 meters below the surface where rooms or vaults can be excavated for disposal of high-level radioactive waste. The goal is to permanently isolate nuclear waste from the human environment. However, many people remain uncomfortable with the immediate stewardship cessation

Stewardship Cessation

Stewardship Cessation is a concept useful in System Engineering. Certain systems remain hazardous for a considerable period after their useful life, and will usually be managed to ensure that the public and the environment is not exposed to the hazard...

of this disposal system, suggesting perpetual management and monitoring would be more prudent.

Because some radioactive species have half-lives longer than one million years, even very low container leakage and radionuclide migration rates must be taken into account. Moreover, it may require more than one half-life until some nuclear materials lose enough radioactivity to no longer be lethal to living organisms. A 1983 review of the Swedish radioactive waste disposal program by the National Academy of Sciences found that country’s estimate of several hundred thousand years—perhaps up to one million years—being necessary for waste isolation “fully justified.”

Storing high level nuclear waste above ground for a century or so is considered appropriate by many scientists. This allows the material to be more easily observed and any problems detected and managed, while decay of radionuclides over this time period significantly reduces the level of radioactivity and associated harmful effects to the container material. It is also considered likely that over the next century newer materials will be developed which will not break down as quickly, thus increasing the longevity of the container once it is permanently buried.

Sea-based options for disposal of radioactive waste include burial beneath a stable abyssal plain

Abyssal plain

An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3000 and 6000 metres. Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth’s surface. They are among the flattest, smoothest...

and burial in a subduction

Subduction

In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate, sinking into the Earth's mantle, as the plates converge. These 3D regions of mantle downwellings are known as "Subduction Zones"...

zone that would slowly carry waste downward into the Earth's mantle

Mantle (geology)

The mantle is a part of a terrestrial planet or other rocky body large enough to have differentiation by density. The interior of the Earth, similar to the other terrestrial planets, is chemically divided into layers. The mantle is a highly viscous layer between the crust and the outer core....

. These approaches are currently not being seriously considered because of technical considerations, legal barriers in the Law of the Sea

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea , also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea treaty, is the international agreement that resulted from the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea , which took place from 1973 through 1982...

, and because in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

sea-based burial has become taboo from fear that such a repository could leak and cause widespread contamination.

The proposed land-based subductive waste disposal method would dispose of nuclear waste in a subduction zone accessed from land, and therefore is not prohibited by international agreement. This method has been described as a viable means of disposing of radioactive waste, and as a state-of-the-art nuclear waste disposal technology.

In nature, sixteen repositories were discovered at the Oklo

Natural nuclear fission reactor

A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where analysis of isotope ratios has shown that self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. The existence of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 at Oklo in Gabon, Africa, by French physicist Francis Perrin. The conditions under...

mine in Gabon

Gabon

Gabon , officially the Gabonese Republic is a state in west central Africa sharing borders with Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, and with the Republic of the Congo curving around the east and south. The Gulf of Guinea, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean is to the west...

where natural nuclear fission reactions took place 1.7 billion years ago. The fission products in these natural formations were found to have moved less than 10 ft (3 m) over this period, though the lack of movement may be due more to retention in the uraninite

Uraninite

Uraninite is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2, but also contains UO3 and oxides of lead, thorium, and rare earth elements...

structure than to insolubility and sorption from moving ground water; uraninite crystals are better preserved here than those in spent fuel rods because of a less complete nuclear reaction, so that reaction products would be less accessible to groundwater attack.

Materials for geological disposal

In order to store the high level radioactive waste in long-term geological depositories, specific waste forms need to be used which will allow the radioactivity to decay away while the materials retain their integrity for thousands of years. The materials currently being used can be broken down into a few classes: glass waste forms, ceramic waste forms, and nanostructured materials.

The glass forms include borosilicate glasses and phosphate glasses. Borosilicate nuclear waste glasses are currently used on an industrial scale to immobilize high level radioactive waste in many countries which are currently producers of nuclear energy or have nuclear weaponry. The glass waste forms have the advantage of being able to accommodate a wide variety of waste-stream compositions, they are easy to scale up to industrial processing, and they are stable against thermal, radiative, and chemical perturbations. These glasses function by binding radioactive elements to nonradioactive glass-forming elements Phosphate glasses while not being used industrially have much lower dissolution rates than borosilicate glasses, which make them a more favorable option. However, no single phosphate material has the ability to accommodate all of the radioactive products so phosphate storage requires more reprocessing to separate the waste into distinct fractions. Both glasses have to be processed at elevated temperatures making them unusable for some of the more volatile radiotoxic elements.

The ceramic waste forms offer higher waste loadings than the glass options because ceramics have crystalline structure. Also, mineral analogues of the ceramic waste forms provide evidence for long term durability. Due to this fact and the fact that they can be processed at lower temperatures, ceramics are often considered the next generation in high level radioactive waste forms. Ceramic waste forms offer great potential, but a lot of research remains to be done.

National management plans

Finland, the United States and Sweden are the most advanced in developing a deep repository for high-level radioactive waste disposal. Countries vary in their plans on disposing used fuel directly or after reprocessing, with France and Japan having an extensive commitment to reprocessing. The country-specific status of high-level waste management plans are described below.

In many European countries (e.g., Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland) the risk or dose limit for a member of the public exposed to radiation from a future high-level nuclear waste facility is considerably more stringent than that suggested by the International Commission on Radiation Protection or proposed in the United States. European limits are often more stringent than the standard suggested in 1990 by the International Commission on Radiation Protection by a factor of 20, and more stringent by a factor of ten than the standard proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for the first 10,000 years after closure. Moreover, the U.S. EPA’s proposed standard for greater than 10,000 years is 250 times more permissive than the European limit.

The countries that have made the most progress towards a repository for high-level radioactive waste have typically started with public consultation

Public consultation

Public consultation, or simply consultation, is a regulatory process by which the public's input on matters affecting them is sought. Its main goals are in improving the efficiency, transparency and public involvement in large-scale projects or laws and policies...

s and made voluntary siting a necessary condition. This consensus seeking approach is believed to have a greater chance of success than top-down modes of decision making, but the process is necessarily slow, and there is "inadequate experience around the world to know if it will succeed in all existing and aspiring nuclear nations".

Moreover, most communities do not want to host a nuclear waste repository as they are "concerned about their community becoming a de facto site for waste for thousands of years, the health and envionmental consequences of an accident, and lower property values".

China

In the Peoples Republic of China, ten reactors provide about 2% of electricity and five more are under construction. China made a commitment to reprocessing in the 1980s; a pilot plant is under construction at Lanzhou

Lanzhou

Lanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. A prefecture-level city, it is a key regional transportation hub, allowing areas further west to maintain railroad connections to the eastern half of the country....

, where a temporary spent fuel storage facility has been constructed. Geological disposal has been studied since 1985, and a permanent deep geological repository was required by law in 2003. Sites in Gansu

Gansu

' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...

Province near the Gobi desert in northwestern China are under investigation, with a final site expected to be selected by 2020, and actual disposal by about 2050.

India

Sixteen nuclear reactors produce about 3% of India’s electricity, and seven more are under construction. Spent fuel is processed at facilities in Trombay

Trombay

Trombay is a northeastern suburb in Mumbai, India, with Mankhurd as the closest railway station on the Harbour Line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway.-History:...

near Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, at Tarapur

Tarapur, Maharashtra

Tarapur is a census town in Thane district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is an industrial town located some 45 km north of Virar, on the Western Railway line of Mumbai Suburban Division . Tarapur can be reached from Boisar, the nearest railway station...

on the west coast north of Mumbai, and at Kalpakkam

Kalpakkam

Kalpakkam is a small town in Tamil Nadu, India, situated on the Coromandel Coast 70 kilometres south of Chennai. A conglomerate of two villages and a DAE township, it is about 55 km from Thiruvanmiyur....

on the southeast coast of India. Plutonium will be used in a fast breeder reactor (under construction) to produce more fuel, and other waste vitrified at Tarapur and Trombay. Interim storage for 30 years is expected, with eventual disposal in a deep geological repository

Deep geological repository

A deep geological repository is a nuclear waste repository excavated deep within a stable geologic environment...

in crystalline rock near Kalpakkam.

Japan

With 55 nuclear reactors producing about 29% of its electricity, the Japanese policy is to reprocess its nuclear waste. Originally spent fuel was reprocessed under contract in England and France, but after public outcry the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant

Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant

The is a nuclear reprocessing plant with an annual capacity of 800 tons of uranium or 8 tons of plutonium, owned by Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited located in the village of Rokkasho in northeast Aomori Prefecture, Japan approximately 17 miles north of the US Air Force's Misawa Air Base...

was built, with operations originally expected to commence in 2007. The policy to use recovered plutonium as mixed oxide (MOX

Mox

MOX might be a name or acronym for:*Malaysian Oxygen Berhad - A Malaysian company that is specializes in providing total gas solutions.*Mixed Oxide Fuel, from nuclear reprocessing*An alien race in the TimeSplitters 2 video game, the Mox...

) reactor fuel was questioned on economic grounds because there are few reactors capable of using it, and in 2004 it was revealed the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had covered up a 1994 report indicating reprocessing spent fuel would cost four times as much as burying it.

In 2000, a Specified Radioactive Waste Final Disposal Act called for creation of a new organization to manage high level radioactive waste, and later that year the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) was established under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. NUMO is responsible for selecting a permanent deep geologic repository site, construction, operation and closure of the facility for waste emplacement by 2040. Site selection was begun in 2002 and application information was sent to 3,239 municipalities, but by spring 2006, no local government had volunteered to host the facility. Final selection of a repository location is expected between 2023 and 2027.

Belgium

The deep disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) has been studied in Belgium for more than 30 years. Boom Clay is presently studied as a reference host formation for HLW disposal. The Hades underground research laboratory (URL) is located at −223 m in the Boom Formation at the Mol site. The Belgian URL is operated by the Euridice European Interest Group, a joint organisation between SCK•CEN

SCK•CEN

SCK•CEN is the Belgian nuclear research centre located in Mol, Belgium. SCK•CEN is active in various areas of research and services in the nuclear sector.-Organisation profile:...

, the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre which initiated the research on waste disposal in Belgium in the 1970s and 1980s and Ondraf/Niras, the waste management authorities. In Belgium, the regulatory body in charge of guidance and licensing approval is the Federal Agency of Nuclear Control, created in 2001.

Finland

In 1983, the government decided to select a site for permanent repository by 2010. With four nuclear reactors providing 29% of its electricity, Finland in 1987 enacted a Nuclear Energy Act making the producers of radioactive waste responsible for its disposal, subject to requirements of its Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority

Säteilyturvakeskus

Säteilyturvakeskus is the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, a government agency tasked with nuclear safety and radiation monitoring in Finland...

and an absolute veto given to local governments in which a proposed repository would be located. Producers of nuclear waste organized Posiva Oy with responsibility for site selection, construction and operation of a permanent repository. A 1994 amendment to the Act required final disposal of spent fuel in Finland, prohibiting the import or export of radioactive waste.

Environmental assessment of four sites occurred in 1997–98, Posiva Oy chose the Olkiluoto

Olkiluoto

The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant is on Olkiluoto Island, which is on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia in the municipality of Eurajoki in western Finland. It is one of Finland's two nuclear power plants, the other being the two-unit VVER Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant...

site near two existing reactors, and the local government approved it in 2000. The Finnish Parliament approved a deep geologic repository there in igneous bedrock at a depth of about 500 meters in 2001. The repository concept is similar to the Swedish model, with containers to be clad in copper and buried below the water table beginning in 2020. An underground characterization facility is under construction at the site (2009).

France

With 59 nuclear reactors contributing about 75% of its electricity, the highest percentage of any country, France has been reprocessing its spent reactor fuel since the introduction of nuclear power there. Some reprocessed plutonium is used to make fuel, but more is being produced than is being recycled as reactor fuel. France also reprocesses spent fuel for other countries, but the nuclear waste is returned to the country of origin. Radioactive waste from reprocessing French spent fuel is expected to be disposed of in a geological repository, pursuant to legislation enacted in 1991 that established a 15-year period for conducting radioactive waste management research. Under this legislation, partition and transmutation of long-lived elements, immobilization and conditioning processes, and long-term near surface storage are being investigated by a Commissariat a l’Energy Atomique (CEA). Disposal in deep geological formations is being studied by the French agency for radioactive waste management, Agence Nationale pour la gestion des Dechets Radioactifs, in underground research labs.

Three sites were identified for possible deep geologic disposal in clay near the border of Meuse

Meuse

Meuse is a department in northeast France, named after the River Meuse.-History:Meuse is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

and Haute-Marne

Haute-Marne

Haute-Marne is a department in the northeast of France named after the Marne River.-History:Haute-Marne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

, near Gard

Gard

Gard is a département located in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.The department is named after the River Gard, although the formerly Occitan name of the River Gard, Gardon, has been replacing the traditional French name in recent decades, even among French speakers.- History...

, and at Vienne

Vienne

Vienne is the northernmost département of the Poitou-Charentes region of France, named after the river Vienne.- Viennese history :Vienne is one of the original 83 departments, established on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Poitou,...

. In 1998 the government approved the Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory

Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory

The Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory is a laboratory located 500 metres underground in Bure in the Meuse département. It allows study of the geological formation in order to evaluate its capacity for deep geological repository of high level and long lived medium level radioactive...

, a site near Meuse/Haute-Marne and dropped the others from further consideration. Legislation was proposed in 2006 to license a repository by 2015, with operations expected in 2025.

Germany

Nuclear waste policy in Germany is in flux. With 17 reactors in operation, accounting for about 30% of its electricity, German planning for a permanent geologic repository began in 1974, focused on salt dome Gorleben

Salt dome Gorleben

The salt dome Gorleben is a proposed deep geological repository in a salt dome in Gorleben in the Lüchow-Dannenberg district in the far north-east of Lower Saxony for low-, medium- and high-level radioactive waste.-Site selection:...

, a salt mine near Gorleben about 100 kilometers northeast of Braunschweig. The site was announced in 1977 with plans for a reprocessing plant, spent fuel management, and permanent disposal facilities at a single site. Plans for the reprocessing plant were dropped in 1979. In 2000, the federal government and utilities agreed to suspend underground investigations for three to ten years, and the government committed to ending its use of nuclear power, closing one reactor in 2003. In 2005 Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor with a promise to change the policy moving away from nuclear power, but was unsuccessful in doing so through November 2006.

Meanwhile, electric utilities have been transporting spent fuel to interim storage facilities at Gorleben, Lubmin and Ahaus until temporary storage facilities can be built near reactor sites. Previously, spent fuel was sent to France or United Kingdom for reprocessing, but this practice was ended in July 2005.

Russia

In Russia, the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) is responsible for 31 nuclear reactors which generate about 16% of its electricity. Minatom is also responsible for reprocessing and radioactive waste disposal, including over 25,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in temporary storage in 2001.

Russia has a long history of reprocessing spent fuel for military purposes, and previously planned to reprocess imported spent fuel, possibly including some of the 33,000 metric tons of spent fuel accumulated at sites in other countries who received fuel from the U.S., which the U.S. originally pledged to take back, such as Brazil, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Mexico, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the European Union.

An Environmental Protection Act in 1991 prohibited importing radioactive material for long-term storage or burial in Russia, but controversial legislation to allow imports for permanent storage was passed by the Russian Parliament and signed by President Putin in 2001. In the long term, the Russian plan is for deep geologic disposal. Most attention has been paid to locations where waste has accumulated in temporary storage at Mayak, near Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, and in granite at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.

Sweden

In Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

there are ten operating nuclear reactors that produce about 45% of its electricity. Two other reactors in Barsebäck

Barsebäck

Barsebäck is a locality situated in Kävlinge Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 509 inhabitants in 2005.It lies about 4 km east of the harbour village Barsebäckshamn. It is known for the Barsebäck nuclear power plant, and for the internationally known golf course Barsebäck Golf & Country Club...

were shut down in 1999 and 2005. When these reactors were built, it was expected their nuclear fuel would be reprocessed in a foreign country, and the reprocessing waste would not be returned to Sweden. Later, construction of a domestic reprocessing plant was contemplated, but has not been built.

Passage of the Stipulation Act of 1977 transferred responsibility for nuclear waste management from the government to the nuclear industry, requiring reactor operators to present an acceptable plan for waste management with “absolute safety” in order to obtain an operating license. In early 1980, after the Three Mile Island meltdown in the United States, a referendum was held on the future use of nuclear power in Sweden. In late 1980, after a three-question referendum produced mixed results, the Swedish Parliament decided to phase out existing reactors by 2010.

The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB, known as SKB), was created in 1980 and is responsible for final disposal of nuclear waste there. This includes operation of a monitored retrievable storage facility, the Central Interim Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel at Oskarshamn

Oskarshamn

Oskarshamn is a coastal city and the seat of Oskarshamn Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 17,258 inhabitants in 2010.-History:The location of Oskarshamn was known as Döderhultsvik since the Medieval age...

, about 150 miles south of Stockholm on the Baltic coast; transportation of spent fuel; and construction of a permanent repository. Swedish utilities store spent fuel at the reactor site for one year before transporting it to the facility at Oskarshamn, where it will be stored in excavated caverns filled with water for about 30 years before removal to a permanent repository. Conceptual design of a permanent repository was determined by 1983, calling for placement of copper-clad iron canisters in granite bedrock about 1,650 feet underground, below the water table in what is known as the KBS-3

KBS-3

KBS-3 is a technology for disposal of high-level radioactive waste developed in Sweden by Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB by appointment from Statens Strålskyddsinstitut .The disposal method consists of the following steps:* The waste is first stored in intermediate...

method. Space around the canisters will be filled with bentonite

Bentonite

Bentonite is an absorbent aluminium phyllosilicate, essentially impure clay consisting mostly of montmorillonite. There are different types of bentonite, each named after the respective dominant element, such as potassium , sodium , calcium , and aluminum . Experts debate a number of nomenclatorial...

clay. After examining six possible locations for a permanent repository, three were nominated for further investigation at Osthammar

Östhammar

Östhammar is a locality and the seat of Östhammar Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 4,534 inhabitants in 2010. Today Östhammar Municipality is a part of Uppsala County, but the area has historically been a part of Stockholm County.-History:...

, Oskarshamn, and Tierp

Tierp

Tierp is a locality and the seat of Tierp Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 5,377 inhabitants in 2005. There is a saying that in Tierp the birds fly upside down.-Communications:...

. The first two are still under consideration, with a final selection expected in 2009. On 3 June 2009 Swedish government choose location for deep level waste site at Östhammar, near Forsmark Nuclear Powerplant.

Switzerland

Switzerland has five nuclear reactors that provide about 43% of its electricity. Some Swiss spent nuclear fuel has been sent for reprocessing in France and the United Kingdom; most fuel is currently being stored without reprocessing. An industry-owned organization, ZWILAG, built and operates a central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and for conditioning low-level radioactive waste and for incinerating wastes. Other interim storage facilities predating ZWILAG continue to operate in Switzerland.

The Swiss program is currently considering options for the siting of a deep repository for high-level radioactive waste disposal, and for low & intermediate level wastes. Construction of a repository is not foreseen until well into this century. Research on sedimentary rock (especially Opalinus Clay) is presently carried out at the Swiss Mont Terri rock laboratory; the Grimsel Test Site, an older facility in crystalline rock is also still active.

United Kingdom

Great Britain has 19 operating reactors, producing about 20% of its electricity. It processes much of its spent fuel at Sellafield

Sellafield

Sellafield is a nuclear reprocessing site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield is an off-shoot from the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale which is currently undergoing...

on the northwest coast across from Ireland, where nuclear waste is vitrified and sealed in stainless steel canisters for dry storage above ground for at least 50 years before eventual deep geologic disposal. Sellafield has a history of environmental and safety problems, including a fire in a nuclear plant in Windscale, and a significant incident in 2005 at the main reprocessing plant (THORP).

In 1982 the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Management Executive (NIREX) was established with responsibility for disposing of long-lived nuclear waste and in 2006 a Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recommended geologic disposal 200–1,000 meters underground. NIREX developed a generic repository concept based on the Swedish model but has not yet selected a site. A Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is responsible for packaging waste from reprocessing and will eventually relieve British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. of responsibility for power reactors and the Sellafield reprocessing plant.

Canada

The 18 operating nuclear power plants in Canada generated about 16% of its electricity in 2006. A national Nuclear Fuel Waste Act was enacted by the Canadian Parliament in 2002, requiring nuclear energy corporations to create a waste management organization to propose to the Government of Canada approaches for management of nuclear waste, and implementation of an approach subsequently selected by the government. The Act defined management as “long term management by means of storage or disposal, including handling, treatment, conditioning or transport for the purpose of storage or disposal.”

The resulting Nuclear Waste Management Organization

Nuclear Waste Management Organization (Canada)

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Canada was established in 2002 under the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act to investigate approaches for managing Canada’s used nuclear fuel...

(NWMO) conducted an extensive 3-year study and consultation with Canadians. In 2005, they recommended Adaptive Phased Management, an approach that emphasized both technical and management methods. The technical method included centralized isolation and containment of spent nuclear fuel in a deep geologic repository in a suitable rock formation, such as the granite of the Canadian Shield or Ordovician sedimentary rocks. Also recommended was a phased decision making process supported by a program of continuous learning, research and development.

In 2007, the Canadian government accepted this recommendation, and NWMO was tasked with implementing the recommendation. No specific timeframe was defined for the process. Currently (2009) the NWMO is designing the process for site selection; siting is expected to take 10 years or more.

United States

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act

Nuclear Waste Policy Act

During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States, no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains dangerously radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage...

of 1982 established a timetable and procedure for constructing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary storage of waste, including spent fuel from 104 civilian nuclear reactors that produce about 19.4% of electricity there. The United States in April 2008 had about 56,000 metric tons of spent fuel and 20,000 canisters of solid defense-related waste, and this is expected to increase to 119,000 metric tons by 2035. The U.S. opted for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a final repository at Yucca Mountain

Yucca Mountain

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County,...

in Nevada, but this project was widely opposed, with some of the main concerns being long distance transportation of waste from across the United States to this site, the possibility of accidents, and the uncertainty of success in isolating nuclear waste from the human environment in perpetuity. Yucca Mountain, with capacity for 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste, was expected to open in 2017. However, the Obama Administration

Presidency of Barack Obama

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009 when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election...

rejected use of the site in the 2009 United States Federal Budget

United States federal budget

The Budget of the United States Government is the President's proposal to the U.S. Congress which recommends funding levels for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1. Congressional decisions are governed by rules and legislation regarding the federal budget process...

proposal, which eliminated all funding except that needed to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary

United States Secretary of Energy

The United States Secretary of Energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the President's Cabinet, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was formed on October 1, 1977 with the creation of the Department of Energy when President Jimmy...

Steven Chu

Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...

told a Senate hearing "the Yucca Mountain site no longer was viewed as an option for storing reactor waste." The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons...

in the United States is the world's first underground repository for transuranic waste.

International repository

Although Australia does not have any nuclear power reactors, Pangea Resources

Pangea Resources

Pangea Resources Australia Pty Ltd was a company notable for a controversial proposal for an international high-level radioactive waste repository in Australia....

considered siting an international repository in the outback of South Australia or Western Australia in 1998, but this stimulated legislative opposition in both states and the Australian national Senate

Australian Senate

The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...

during the following year. Thereafter, Pangea ceased operations in Australia but reemerged as Pangea International Association, and in 2002 evolved into the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage with support from Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan and Switzerland. A general concept for an international repository has been advanced by one of the principals in all three ventures. Russia has expressed interest in serving as a repository for other countries, but does not envision sponsorship or control by an international body or group of other countries. South Africa, Argentina and western China have also been mentioned as possible locations.

In the EU, COVRA is negotiating a European-wide waste disposal system with single disposal sites that can be used by several EU-countries. This EU-wide storage possibility is being researched under the SAPIERR-2 program.

External links

International Atomic Energy Agency – Internet Directory of Nuclear Resources (links)
Nuclear Regulatory Commission – Radioactive Waste (documents)
Radwaste Solutions (magazine)
World Nuclear Association – Radioactive

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Challenges with radioactive waste management

Geologic disposal

Materials for geological disposal

National management plans

China

India

Japan

Belgium

Finland

France

Germany

Russia

Sweden

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Canada

United States

International repository

See also

Further reading

External links