Finlandhas approvedthe construction of the world ’s first permanent nuclear waste disposition adeptness , which will be able to store the waste for 100,000 year . Built into bedrock , the facility will consist of hole-and-corner tunnels at astuteness of between 400 and 450 meters ( 1,300 – 1,480 groundwork ) , which have already been built while engineers were looking into the feasibility of the labor . It is estimated that the facility will be capable to hold6,500 tonnes(7,165 piles ) of eminent - point nuclear waste material when completed .
Nuclear waste can be divided intothree category : gloomy , intermediate and eminent - level waste . Low - horizontal surface waste contains mostly short - last radioactivity and come up from places like hospitals – usually consisting of composition , wearable , dick and such – and is typically buried . Intermediate - level waste is usually resins and chemical goop , as well as material from nuclear reactor decommissioning , and is normally solidified in concrete or bitumen .
gamy - stratum waste is the nasty stuff . This is what remains from the “ burn ” of uranium , and due to the decay heating , unremarkably needs cooling and shielding . There are presently around240,000 tonnes(264,555 tons ) of used high - level nuclear barren in storage , most of which is still at the site at which it was make . Around90 percentof this waste is presently moderate at the bottom of storage ponds covered by between seven and 12 meters ( 23 – 40 feet ) of water . The new sanction web site in Finland will encapsulate the fuel in fuzz - lined container , cache it in the burrow , and then seal it in with bentonite clay , a volcanic ash that expands when integrate with water .
Finland currently hasfour atomic reactorsup and running , which supply 30 percent of the country ’s energy , with the rest of the nation ’s electrical energy need being meet by ember and gas from Russia and Poland . The country is also build a fifth nuclear power nuclear reactor that , when it was approved in 2002 , was the first new atomic social unit to be give the go - ahead in Europe for more than a decennary . It has not , however , been without disceptation .
expect to have been fill out in 2009 , the new reactor , called Olkiluoto 3 , still has n’t been built and hasoverrun well on cost . Expected to finally reach culmination in2018 , it ’s likely to arrive in at around £ 2.7 billion ( $ 4.2 billion ) over budget . Ironically , the works was supposed to be a model construction showcasing how theGeneration III reactorcan be safe , low-priced and rescue on time , which would allow similar nuclear reactor to be roll out across the rest of Europe .
Main simulacrum : BBC World Service / Flickr CC BY - NC 2.0
