When it comes to spent radioactive fuel – and engineering consent for its disposal – Helsinki is centuries ahead of Washington and the rest of the world, literally. Beneath a forested patch of land on the Gulf of Bothnia, at the bottom of a steep tunnel that winds for three miles through granite bedrock, Finland is getting ready to entomb its nuclear waste. If all goes well, sometime early in the next decade the first of what will be nearly 3,000 sealed copper canisters, each up to 17ft long and containing about two tons of spent reactor fuel from Finland’s nuclear power industry, will be lowered into a vertical borehole in a side tunnel about 1,400 feet underground. As more canisters are buried, the holes and tunnels – up to 20 miles of them – will be packed with clay and eventually abandoned. The fuel, which contains plutonium and other products of nuclear fission, will remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years – time enough for a new ice age and other epochal events. But between the 2-inch-thick copper, the clay and the surrounding ancient granite, officials say, there should be no risk of contamination to future generations.
Independent 22nd June 2017 read more »