Australia Has Nowhere To Put Its Shipment Of French Nuclear Waste
http://www.businessinsider.com/australia-french-nuclear-waste-2014-7
In the second half of next year France will be sending nuclear waste to Australia for permanent storage.
The waste comes from uranium and plutonium exported to France between 1999 and 2004 to run its nuclear power plants.
Its coming home because of an international agreement that states that Australia as the nation of origin must take the spent fuel back. This same agreement means well also be taking waste back from the UK sometime before 2020.
The bulk of the French waste consists of unrecycled nuclear fuel mixed into molten glass to form whats known as a durable product. This will be accompanied by six drums of intermediate level refuse including gloves, protective clothing, and old equipment, embedded in cement. All this makes a total volume of about 13.2 cubic meters, roughly one third the size of a shipping container, with a half-life of 24,000 years.
Read more:
https://news.vice.com/article/australia-has-nowhere-to-put-its-shipment-of-french-nuclear-waste#ixzz37czOZsKt