Europe makes big bets on nuclear waste burial
Source: Reuters
Europe makes big bets on nuclear waste burial
By Terhi Kinnunen and Muriel Boselli
EURAJOKI, Finland/BURE, France | Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:42pm EDT
(Reuters) - On a small Finnish island and deep in remote rural France, far from the debates and doubts that followed Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, the ground work is underway for a commitment to atomic power for the long term - the very long term.
The problem is disposal of nuclear waste, at present mostly done at surface level. Finland, France and Sweden plan to build the world's first permanent storage sites hundreds of meters underground.
Finland has already started to build Onkalo, which is designed to take waste over a period of 100 years and then store it for at least 100,000 years, safe from population, fire, flood and other risks. France plans a similar project in Bure in the country's east.
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"Nuclear waste disposal in geological formations appropriately selected and designed is the least bad concept," said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear waste expert and head of the U.S.-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-nuclear-waste-idUSBRE85C0YM20120613