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March
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| Excavating equipment
at the site of the Onkalo repository
project, the world’s first permanent
spent-nuclear-fuel storage facility, deep in
granite bedrock in Finland, in 2017.?Miikka
Pirinen for The New York Times |
Nuclear
waste finds its forever home
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For
decades, the U.S. government has been staring down
a growing problem: It doesn’t have a permanent
site to dispose of used nuclear fuel.
Finland,
however, is about to be the first country that
does.
Posiva
Oy, a joint venture owned by two Finnish nuclear
power companies, is on the cusp of officially
starting operations at what is set to be the
world’s first permanent underground disposal site
for spent nuclear fuel. The Times
in 2017.
Posiva
has been working on the site, located on the
country’s western coast, since 2004, and it hopes
to begin permanent disposal in less than a year.
“We
have a solution,” said Pasi Tuohimaa, Posiva’s
communications manager. “Final disposal of the
spent fuel, it has been the missing part of
sustainable use of nuclear energy.”
Earlier
this month, the United States Supreme Court
in a lawsuit over the federal government’s
decision to approve a temporary storage facility
for spent nuclear fuel in Texas. The lawsuit
underscored a touchy subject — plans to store
nuclear waste deep under Yucca Mountain in Nevada,
the only permanent storage site in the United
States ,
have been stalled for years.
The
World Nuclear Association estimates the amount of
spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. at the moment would
fill up only half of a football field. But, as
demand for electricity has risen, the nuclear
industry is going through something of a
renaissance, with companies investing billions and
planning to reopen shuttered plants in the U.S.
How Posiva’s storage plan
works
 |
| A copper capsule for
spent nuclear fuel during a test in the
Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository in
Eurajoki, Finland, in 2018.?Lehtikuva/Reuters |
The
barriers to permanently storing nuclear waste
aren’t as much technical as about planning and
politics. Permanent nuclear waste storage
facilities can take decades to study and build.
At
its disposal site, Posiva has drilled an array of
tunnels spanning a collective 10 kilometers,
Tuohimaa said. The company’s plan is to insert the
used fuel pellets into rods that are contained in
iron and copper canisters. The containers are then
stored hundreds of meters underground and
surrounded by compressed bentonite, a type of clay
that swells when it comes into contact with
moisture and essentially tightens the area around
the containers. The tunnels are then backfilled.
“The
main thing is to isolate it safely,” Tuohimaa
said.
Right
now, spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. can be
temporarily stored in special pools or in dry
casks at nuclear-reactor sites, . It can also be
stored at independent storage sites , which is one of the issues
at the heart of the case that has made its way to
the Supreme Court.
Storing
it temporarily, however, has a hefty price tag.
The federal government currently pays hundreds of
millions of dollars per year for the spent fuel’s
temporary storage.
Where permanent storage
goes from here
In
Finland, which gets more than 40 percent of its
power from nuclear energy, Posiva is currently
doing a trial run using fill-in elements.
Other
countries are following in Finland’s footsteps.
France, Sweden and Switzerland have selected sites
for planned projects, and other projects have been
proposed in China, Canada, Germany, Hungary,
Britain and Japan, .
And
in the U.S., there has been talk of revisiting
plans for the Yucca Mountain site. Last year,
lawmakers from both sides of the aisle .
More
Climate Fix news:
Wind and solar surpass
coal: For the first time ever, wind
and solar combined to produce more electricity
than coal in the United States last year,
according , an
energy think tank. Wind and solar made up 17
percent of U.S. electricity last year; coal
contributed a record low of 15 percent.
Eighty-one
percent of new power capacity additions last year
came from solar.
Post-car cities in Europe:
“European cities are dramatically scaling back
their relationship with the car,” .
“They are removing parking spaces and creating
dedicated bike lanes. They are installing cameras
at the perimeter of urban centers and either
charging the most-polluting vehicles or preventing
them from entering. Some are going so far as to
put entire neighborhoods off-limits to vehicles.”
The U.K.’s big cuts:
Emissions in the United Kingdom fell 3.6 percent
last year as coal use dropped to the lowest level
since 1666, the year of the Great Fire, .
Germany’s too:
The country’s environmental agency said greenhouse
gas emissions in Europe’s biggest economy fell by
around 3.4 percent last year, .
Brazil’s bold plans:
“Brazil plans to launch an ambitious $125 billion
fund to protect tropical forests when it hosts the
COP30 climate summit this November,” .
Last year, The Times reported on Brazil’s , which would pay developing
countries a fee for every hectare of forest they
maintain. The idea has been hailed as a potential
breakthrough in financing tropical forest
preservation.
Nuclear commitments:
Amazon, Google and Meta back tripling worldwide
nuclear capacity by 2050,
Electric vehicles:
In a presentation to journalists last week ,
Toyota may have revealed that it’s working on an
all-electric pickup truck for markets in big
countries like the United States. The model, they
write, could be ready by 2026.
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