Finland grants licence to world's first permanent nuclear waste repository
Finland's government has granted an operating licence for the world's first permanent repository for radioactive spent nuclear fuel, waste management company Posiva said on Thursday 22 October, 22 years after construction began on the site, according to Yahoo News.
The waste repository has been blasted into 1.9 billion-year-old stable bedrock in southwestern Finland, where it will remain harmfully radioactive for thousands of years. The site is expected to commence operations soon, but Posiva has said that no exact start date has been decided.
Posiva said that before final disposal begins, they will finalise the commissioning stage, and carry out the necessary tests and inspections which the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority.
Onkalo has space for 6,500 tonnes of uranium, and will provide permanent storage for spent fuel from Finland's five nuclear reactors. The fuel will be encapsulated in highly corrosion-resistant copper canisters that are lowered into holes drilled in tunnels in the bedrock, almost 500 metres down. These will then be filled with bentonite clay and finally sealed with a steel-reinforced concrete plug.
The fuel will be highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years. After about 100,000 years, the levels will be about the same as the uranium ore of which the fuel is made, Yahoo News reports.
