Onkalo, whose name means “cavity” or “cave” in Finnish, is one of the most complex facilities of its kind, designed for a pressing and unprecedented task: safely storing some of Earth’s most toxic tissues about 1,500 feet underground in what’s known as a deep mined geological deposit.
The procedure requires remarkable engineering prowess. It all starts at an encapsulation plant, where robots remove spent nuclear fuel rods from garages and place them in copper and cast-iron drums that can be up to two stories high. Once filled, those heavy vessels, which weigh about 24 tons, will descend in an elevator for more than a quarter of a mile to a cavern carved into a 2-billion-year-old crystalline bedrock. (The adventure lasts 50 minutes). Between 30 and 40 people will participate in each tomb. of those huge containers encased in bentonite clay and sealed concrete. According to the theory, up to 3,250 containers containing 6,500 tons of the most harmful waste to humanity will remain intact for hundreds of thousands of years.
Nothing assembled by human hands is more than a fraction of that. The oldest known design in the world, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, is just over 11,000 years old. It is mandatory to design Onkalo to last that long, as the tissues abandoned by nuclear fission remain radioactive for millennia. To safely eliminate it, you have to hide it for eternity. That way, nothing, whether natural disasters, future ice ages, or even the end of humanity itself, would reveal to anyone or anything. to its dangers.
“The plan is that there will be no symptoms [of the facility],” said Pasi Tuohimaa, communications manager at Posiva, the company that manages Finland’s nuclear waste. “No one would even know it’s there, whether it’s long-term generations, long-term extraterrestrial beings or whatever. “
Building such a place, however technologically complex, can be less difficult than convincing a network to host it. Obtaining this approval can take decades and is based on an undeniable principle.
“One of the principles of the geologic garage is the concept that the generations that enjoy the benefits of nuclear force also pay for and participate in the solution,” said Rodney Ewing, a mineralogist and tissue scientist at Stanford University and co-director of the university’s Center for Security and International Cooperation.
The lengthy process to achieve this is called consent-based site selection, a task that many in the nuclear force industry consider as important as the global transition away from fossil fuels. The nuclear force accounts for about one-fifth of U. S. electric power generation. and its expansion is one of the few elements of the Biden administration’s force program that has a strong bipartisan coalition. Over the past year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm touted the nation’s last reactor, celebrated plans for a small experimental modular reactor and unveiled a $1. 5 billion loan to restart. a plant that disappeared in Michigan.
These are not isolated cases. The United States is trying to triple its nuclear capacity by 2050. Still, experts say there isn’t enough public debate about how to manage the corresponding backlog of radioactive waste, which will worsen a challenge the country has been putting off since the start of nuclear power. age. . After scuttling plans for a deep geological deposit a generation ago, the U. S. is scrambling to catch up with Finland and several other countries, adding Canada, which could be just one site until the end of the year.
As the U. S. moves toward a long-term post-carbon in which nuclear power can play a key role, policymakers, force experts, and network leaders say that unavoidable waste management is not a technical problem, but a social one. Build a repository that can protect the public for millennia. The biggest challenge is convincing other people that they should live next door.
Even before the world’s first nuclear power plant was put into operation in Pennsylvania in 1957, the United States knew how to harness the effluvia generated by splitting atoms to produce electricity. Earlier that year, geologists and geophysicists wrote a report from the National Academy of Sciences. proposing to bury him. Opinions have not changed much in 67 years.
“The only viable way to solve the challenge of isolating radioactive waste that may remain hazardous for thousands of years from the environment is a deep geological repository,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power protection at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There is no alternative. “
However, this waste, most of which comes from the country’s 54 nuclear reactors, remains in what amounts to a bloodless garage. The spent fuel rods are kept in place in water tanks for about a decade and then moved to metal and concrete containers. called dry drums and are kept for another 40 years in what is known as a temporary garage. Only then do the curtains cool enough to be hidden underground. However, this last step was never carried out. The country’s 85 temporary garages involve more than 86,000 tons of waste, a scenario that is like leaving waste in the garage indefinitely. The scenario may worsen as the country invests in complex small modular reactors.
“To be honest, it’s a hobby for me,” said Paul Murray, who in October became deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposal at the Department of Energy. “Everyone talks about shiny new reactors, but no one ever talks about downstream control of the fuel coming out of them. “
Congress attempted to achieve this scenario in 1982 by passing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. President Ronald Reagan called the law “a vital step in the pursuit of nonviolent uses of atomic energy. “nuclear waste until 1998 and that the utilities that produce it pay a rate of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity to dispose of it. The task failed because the government never appropriated most of the waste. This failure has allowed utilities to collect $500 million in fines from Washington every year since 1998. A report released by the Government Accountability Office in 2021 indicated that federal liabilities could reach as little as $60 billion through 2030.
The federal government’s missteps continued when deep geological deposit projects were derailed about 15 years ago. The 1982 Act directed the Department of Energy to provide the President, Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency with suggestions for sites. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate one: Yucca Mountain, about a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas, on land that the Western Shoshone Nation considers sacred.
This top-down procedure is antithetical to selecting a site based on consent, and it collapsed in the face of network opposition and the efforts of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat convinced President Obama to reject the proposal, which at the time charges $13 billion. The Obama leadership has convened an organization of scientists to come up with a new plan; In 2012, it recommended creating an independent agency, assigning it responsibility for the nuclear fund and asking it to renew efforts through consent-based location selection.
This council mimicked what Finland had done and what Canada was doing to build consensus on the network. Posiva spent 4 decades operating at the Olkiluoto facility; Canadian studies began 24 years ago with the creation of the Independent Nuclear Waste Management Organization. However, more than 10 years after the Department of Energy made consent-based implantation its official policy, little progress has been made toward a deep geological repository in the U. S. for nuclear tea advertising. (Radioactive tea generated through the defense industry has, since 1999, been secured 2,150 feet underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. )
Instead of identifying imaginable sites for a deep geological deposit, the Energy Department directed Murray, who has a background in nuclear generation and environmental management, to take charge of a waste accumulation that estimates could take just 55 years to emerge from the interim period. Much of this waste languishes in dry drums that dot power plants in 37 states. Last year, he formed a 12-member consortium founded with consent to release the search for a federally controlled site that would temporarily pool the country’s waste until a permanent site is built.
According to Kara Colton, she could start by simply searching existing force communities with coal-fired power plants that have been decommissioned or will soon be retired. She leads the Energy Communities Alliance, a coalition of local governments that is part of the consortium and distributes $1 million in federal grants to three communities interested in hosting a nuclear waste storage facility. (Additional grants will be available this summer. ) But he worries that without a concerted, long-term effort by the government to locate a permanent repository, no one will engage in participating in components.
“It is a multigenerational task and we have a political formula that adapts all the time,” he said. “Without guaranteed funding, we check every year to see if the progress made changes. “
But Murray’s quest to bolster the transient waste repository would arguably be futile. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Ministry of Energy has no authority to designate an interim repository unless the facility is connected to a plan to identify a deep geological repository. That makes Murray’s efforts “pretty insignificant,” Lyman said.
Murray admits that his project faces challenges. Without a physically powerful garage program, it’s very difficult to locate a makeshift shop,” he said. “We have to start a garage program as a nation, or else other people think it’s going to be a de facto garage installation. “
Reaching a consensus on a place for a permanent garage and then building it can take only 50 years, he said. Meanwhile, the country’s utilities continue to collect 2,000 tons of nuclear waste a year.
If 50 years sounds absurd, you know that Finland started looking for a garage site in 1983. Within a decade, the government had thought of 4 sites in a procedure that took into account network perspectives and geological and environmental criteria such as bedrock density. , groundwater movement and garage potential. Changes in the movement and formation of glaciers on the surface due to climate change.
Eurajoki, a rural town of just over 9,000 inhabitants, provided the greatest social and geographical factors and the most productive ones. When the city council voted to approve the site in 2000, its members, as well as many residents, seemed predisposed to the concept because Olkiluto, located thirteen kilometers away, was already home to two reactors (a third, Olkiluoto 3, opened in April 2023; the three plants supply about a third of the country’s electric city).
Still, Posiva, the independent company tasked with building a deep geological repository, has embarked on a long-term crusade to foster the network and trust, training citizens on nuclear force and waste storage to assuage their concerns. Tuohimma, Posiva’s communications manager, called it a “long haul” that stemmed from the company’s efforts to sell the generation in the 1970s. Although the Finnish Green Party and Greenpeace have expressed views about the divestment – which stems from the structure of the new nuclear power plants and not from waste disposal – opposition has since waned. Construction of the billion-euro facility began in 2000; Posiva estimates that over the next century the exploitation, filling and, in all likelihood, waterproofing of the site will cost 5,500 million euros. The time it takes will depend on the timing with which the country generates radioactive waste.
The mayor of Eurajoki, Vesa Lakaniemi, told the German news site DW that hosting all this nuclear infrastructure generates about 20 million euros in taxes each year. This represents almost a part of the city’s annual source of income and is “how we can plan our long-term investments”, adding a renovated school, a new library and 8 million euros in sports facilities. Lakaniemi believes that in the end citizens supported the task because of Posiva’s history of protection and because Finns tend to accept their government as loyal. and its institutions.
Canada’s efforts have been very easy.
The search for a site in the country began in 2002, when Parliament passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. The law created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO, which in 2010 unveiled a nine-step plan that would lead to an agreement to host a repository within a decade. Within two years, 21 communities had expressed interest in doing just that.
The company has spent the last twelve years compiling a list of the two most suitable sites from a geological and social point of view. To do this, he started by making sure that each applicant had a suitable site, large enough for the required infrastructure. , but far enough away from drinking water materials and land as national parks. Communities were also asked to describe the benefits they would derive from employment opportunities and the business progress that the allocation would promote.
Over time, the variety procedure narrowed the list of possible sites to two. The first is South Bruce, a small agricultural network about a hundred miles west of Toronto and about 35 miles from the country’s largest nuclear power plant. The other is Ignace, a rural town about 150 miles northwest of Lake Superior.
First Nations communities in those positions (the Saugeen Ojibway Nation near South Bruce and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation near Ignace) will also have to give consent, but this procedure is independent and sometimes less publicized than that carried out in municipalities.
The site near Ignace sits on what is roughly equivalent to federal land, making it less difficult to obtain than in South Bruce, where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization had to sign agreements with landowners to eventually acquire their land for the 1,500 acres. This meant promoting the concept not only among the community, but also among individual owners. The company has made a profit by spending generously to help the city, from new fire trucks to a scholarship fund to paying some city salaries. city more than $9. 3 million since 2013. (Ignatius has earned about $14 million since 2018. )
Still, the idea of housing a depot has divided South Bruce’s roughly 6,000 residents, who were once united by their involvement in religious teams and youth sports. Proponents say they take it for granted that science proves that deposit generation is safe and point to the benefits it already brings. But critics worry about the effect of all this radioactive curtain on the city, now and in the coming decades, and worry that the potential economic and environmental costs have not been sufficiently studied. They also feel that the NWMO is less interested in contemplating their perspectives and answering their questions than in promoting the deposit through monetary promises.
Carolyn Fell, the agency’s communications manager in South Bruce, said citizens can locate her at her workplace five days a week, where she will be happy to answer their questions. “We have listened to the considerations of the network and at all times we are doing everything possible to address them in a very direct and transparent way,” he said.
Michelle Stein is rarely so sure. She and her husband Gary raise farm animals and sheep on a farm they bought in South Bruce 30 years ago. They are also raising three young people there and dream of taking care of them. But after the NWMO began signing agreements with adjacent landowners for which Stein’s youth moved to 1,500 acres in 2019. Today, she fears that her land will soon be useless and that her livelihood will disappear.
“In my opinion, they deserve to at least pay us what they paid other people they sold at the beginning of the project,” Stein said. She is also concerned about the effect the facility could have on groundwater and whether anyone would buy beef and lamb raised next to a nuclear facility. She believes some of her neighbors and the city council have been bought off thanks to NWMO’s investments in the community.
“They say they probably wouldn’t get to a network that doesn’t need it,” Stein said, “but they’re actually pushing us to need it. “
Stein joined more than a dozen others to organize Protect Our Waterways to oppose the project. The group’s volunteer president, Anja Vandervlies, fears that the buffer zone, which prohibits living or farming within a certain distance of the facility, will end up adding one component or her entire farm. She and Stein testified before the city council, wrote op-eds for the local newspaper, and erected bright yellow homemade billboards that read “Say No to NWMO” and “Stop Canada’s Nuclear Weapons Spill!”But they felt left out through what they saw as competitive marketing through the agency. In 2022, his group of candidates for the city council performed poorly in the elections; Mayor Mark Goetz said he and the organization’s five elected members now publicly assist with the waste facility.
Goetz succeeded his father, who became mayor in 2012 when South Bruce told the Nuclear Waste Management Organization that he was interested in hosting the repository. Goetz said his father was interested in the economic progression the allocation would bring to a network that relies heavily on agriculture. He rejects claims that the city council did not seek the network’s opinion and notes that it has hosted many events over the past 12 years. He is also grateful for the money the NWMO has provided to date. But more than that, you think someone wants to host the site, so why not South Bruce?
“We have benefited from reasonable nuclear energy and I don’t think we will leave that waste to future generations,” Goetz said.
Voters will decide this factor in a referendum in October. More than 50% of voters will have to vote for the votes to be counted, which Goetz said makes the council’s position largely moot.
“The good thing about the referendum is that everyone gets an equivalent vote,” he said. “It’s a democracy and it’s going to be a majority government, so the council’s resolution doesn’t matter. “
But if the referendum receives less than 50% of the voters, the resolution corresponds to the city council.
A win at South Bruce may not necessarily be enough, as the Saugeen Ojibway Nation will also have to approve the idea. Even then, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization will make the final determination later this year and is also tracking the site near Ignace. .
This option, called the Revell site, is halfway between Ignace and the larger town of Dryden. Vince Ponka, the agency’s regional communications director for Northern Ontario, described it as an egg-shaped granite formation several kilometers long and deep in Canadian territory. Shield, a vast igneous and metamorphic formation that surrounds Hudson Bay.
“It’s an ideal piece of rock to involve the [geological deep mine deposit],” he said. Although the facility would be located beyond the city limits, Ignace would space out the “Experience Center,” a training complex designed to introduce other people to the depot. He called it a “true architectural gem” that could spur economic development.
Jodie Defeo, a registered nurse and member of Ignace’s city council, said she was indifferent when she heard about the option of a deposit 14 years ago, but any skepticism was assuaged last summer with a vacation in Olkiluoto funded through the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
“There wasn’t any sense of caution or anything like that, it seemed like there was no reason to worry” among the people of Eurajoki, he said. She saw the improvement in tax revenues in schools and local infrastructure and returned home in wonderful condition. She believes a similar facility could bring good luck to Ignace, who fell on hard times when the mining industry began to decline a few decades ago.
“There’s no cash for outdated infrastructure,” he said. Few jobs, a declining housing market, and a shrinking population result in a small tax base. While her 17-year-old needs to stay in Ignace, her 27-year-old son has moved to Thunder Bay, a town of about 110,000 people just three hours south, on the shores of Lake Superior. For Defeo, the ability to host a repository gives him a sense of hope.
“I feel like maybe we’re on the cusp of change,” he said.
Wendy O’Connor did not share her optimism. She is a communications officer in Thunder Bay and a volunteer for the opposition organization We the Nuclear Free North. He said that even if Ignatius had raised his hand to welcome the landfill, all the waste would pass through his city. The trucks that will transport it will travel approximately 1,600 miles along the Trans-Canada Highway, a largely two-lane highway that runs along the shoreline of Lake Huron and the cliffs of Lake Superior. He worries about the threat of injury on the highway or on the road. site of the structure.
Of course, there is the threat of radioactive curtain leaks during shipping or short-term storage, which has occurred in Germany and New Mexico over the past two decades, but with no known impact on their health.
“We can say with certainty that injuries are only possible, but they do happen,” said Ewing, a professor at Stanford University. But, he added, they are studied and errors are corrected.
Although scientists explicitly rely on the engineering of the deposits, it is almost inevitable that, after millennia, some of the cartridges they contain will corrode, some of the barriers that seal their graves will erode, and some of the waste will sink. This is safer to happen deep in the Earth, where the risk is lower. As Stanford reported in 2018 that Ewing helped solve the problems, “‘insurance’ does not mean zero health risk over thousands of years, but it does mean a health risk. “low enough threat to be appropriate for existing population and long-term generations. “
Given the minimal dangers of harboring nuclear waste in the country, some wonder if the selection of a person based on consent is nothing more than a form of flattery, a way to pay a network to take on a task that no one else needs to do. .
“A cynic would say this means that each and every network has its price,” Lyman said. “The question is how much reimbursement is sufficient and whether the reimbursement point that will be sufficient will be something that the industry and the government can afford. “These are all unanswered queries.
But as efforts in Finland and Canada demonstrate, this technique at least gives the network a voice and vote in the long run, anything the U. S. government denied Nevadans when it chose Yucca Mountain all those years ago. The failure of those efforts shows the limits of a top-down technique and the country’s upcoming stockpiles of nuclear waste underscore the pressing desire to take on a challenge that has been ignored for too long. As Lyman pointed out, the country will have to move forward. You’ll have to engage with intergenerational justice by making the most productive selection imaginable to protect those who will be there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, employing the most productive science and generation that exists today. And that, in the eyes of many experts in the field, means finding deeply exploited geological deposits.
“No strategy to increase nuclear force should be carried out that is not accompanied by a waste control strategy,” Ewing said.
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