The world’s first permanent repository for nuclear fuel waste will open later this year on Olkiluoto, a sparsely populated Finnish island with lush forests in the Baltic Sea three hours north of Helsinki. The «Onkalo» (Finnish for «cavity» or «cave») is one of the most modern facilities of its kind, designed to store nuclear waste 450 meters underground for 100,000 years.
The process of nuclear waste disposal begins at the plant, where automated machines remove spent fuel rods from storage casks during sealing and place them in copper and cast iron casks up to two stories high. Once full, these casks, weighing about 24 metric tons, will be lowered by elevator into a cave carved into the 2 billion-year-old crystalline bedrock, a process that takes 50 minutes. Each storage facility will hold 30-40 such containers filled with concrete. The total storage capacity is 3,250 canisters or 6,500 metric tons.
«It is planned that there will be no external signs of the object. Nobody will even know it’s there, whether we’re talking about future generations, future aliens or somebody else,» says Pasi Tuohimaa, communications manager at Posiva, the agency that manages Finland’s nuclear waste.
Building such a place is easier than convincing the community to accept it. Getting that approval can take decades, but it’s based on a simple principle.
«One of the principles of geological disposal is the idea that the generations that benefit from nuclear energy should also pay for and participate in the solution,» said Rodney Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist at Stanford University and co-director of the institution’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Finland began searching for a repository site in 1983. Over the course of a decade, the government considered four locations, weighing community opinion along with geological and environmental criteria. Eurajoki, a town of more than 9,000 residents, offered the most social support and the best natural conditions. In 2000, the city council voted to approve the project. Local residents were inclined to do so because two nuclear power units were already located 13 kilometers away in Alkilaut. The third one was launched in April 2023 and provides a third of Finland’s electricity needs.
Source: Gizmodo
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