Watch how Finland plans to store uranium waste for 100,000 years
Construction is underway at a facility designed to safely entomb radioactive fuel rods
4 MAR 202211:30 AMBYJOEL GOLDBERG
V. ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE
The saying “out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t quite hold true for radioactive materials. Proposed permanent storage facilities for nuclear waste have encountered pushback in countries such as France, Sweden, and the United States—including the latter’s famously contested Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. However, Finland has succeeded in gaining approval for a long-term nuclear waste repository, which is set to open in a few years.
Onkalo, meaning “pit” or “cavity” in Finnish, will shelter spent uranium fuel nearly half a kilometer below Earth’s surface outside the town of Eurajoki. A series of barriers—giant copper casks, water-absorbing bentonite clay, and water-resistant crystalline rock—are expected to protect harmful radionuclides from seeping out of the site and into the local ecosystem. However, the decidedly nonporous rock still contain cracks, and Posiva—the nuclear waste company in charge of the project—had to map and avoid them as workers dug deeper.
The project is crucial to mitigating risk for Finland’s nuclear energy sector, which will account for 40% of the country’s electricity after a fifth reactor comes online this year. If successful, Onkalo’s copper casks will keep spent uranium safe and dry until it has decayed to acceptable levels—at least 100,000 years in the future.
https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-how-finland-plans-store-uranium-waste-100-000-years
