Kavita Pillay

Kavita Pillay

Kavita Pillay's work as a journalist and documentary filmmaker has allowed her to spend among Finnish tango stars, Singaporean comedians and Indian men named Stalin and Lenin. She lives and works in Boston.

  • |
  • ALL POSTS

Finland’s Nuclear Waste Disposal Dilemma

January 2, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment
Onkalo tunnel (Photo: Posiva Oy)

Onkalo tunnel (Photo: Posiva Oy)

A vast network of tunnels is being constructed beneath the Nordic countryside in Finland.

It’s intended to safely store nuclear waste for up to a 1,000 centuries.

Eventually, officials say, there will be no surface trace of the tunnels below.

Which brings up the question of how, or even whether, its existence should be communicated to future generations.

Discussion

8 comments for “Finland’s Nuclear Waste Disposal Dilemma”

  • Albert Stroberg

    Another possibility seems very likely to me- in 200-300 years from now technology will find this stuff a valuable asset. Nuclear fusion and recycling techniques will continue to evolve in an industry barely 60 years old. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/daniel.j.pajak Daniel John Pajak

      It may not even take that long for the stuff to be of use.  Are you familiar with the traveling wave reactor concept currently being promoted by Intellectual Ventures and their subsidiary TerraPower?  I’m not saying the concept will prove viable; it only currently exists on the computers of TerraPower’s employees.  But, if some of these can be built within the next couple decades and prove that the technology works…that 200-300 year timeframe can turn into thirty-to-forty years because, if the technology proves viable in the U.S., the Finns may want in on it

      Still, though I disagree with your timetable; I agree with you on your overall point.  The storage facility should be designed in a way to minimize and restrict, but not completely forestall, access.

      The real problem with nuclear is that it has been under-utilized for the past two decades.  Due to lack of citing facilities (and thereby lack of investment) in the United States, with its enormous energy demand, since the Three Mile Island disaster, new nuclear technologies have been slow to develop, even if revolutionary new concepts have been developed “on paper”.  As a result, much of the world that is actually still building limits itself to building with technology forty years old.  We don’t respond to airplane crashes by not building any more airplanes, or by stepping backward into using older models…we figure out what went wrong and fix the problem to make better airplanes…we should do the same in regards to Three Mile Island; Chernobyl; Fukishima!

  • Steve Ladd

    Thanks for this story on the Onkalo facility.  INTO ETERNITY, the film about the facility mentioned in the story, is available  in North America from The Video Project: http://www.videoproject.com/intoeternity.html

  • http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/brian-p-hanley/ Brian Hanley

    Are you aware that there are at least 4 billion tons of uranium dissolved in the world’s oceans?  Or that thousands of tons of uranium, thorium and radium are distributed across the world from burning of coal? That more uranium gets into the air from coal burning every year than is mined and winds up as yellowcake? Or that the uranium content of coal ash is no higher than the uranium content of a granite kitchen counter? 

    In other words, more radioactive material than is in the entire Finnish nuclear waste supply is already out there in the environment – by astronomically larger quantities. There are millions of times more naturally occurring uranium than there are of all radionuclides in human hands. Most of the rad-waste that must by law be buried and contained is so low-level that it may be less radioactive than a granite kitchen counter.

  • billbrueggemeyer

    This reminds me of a rather weird similar story I became aware of. It seems that the scientists who performed the first nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago had no idea what to do with the waste from that. So, they took it out into a forest preserve near Chicago (Red Gate Woods) and buried it rather secretly. Concern got the better of secrecy so that today this place is in a small mowed clearing with a permanent sign telling you not to picnic of dig there.

    The problem at Onkalo is not what will happen 100,000 years from now, but the process of getting there. I hope they allow picnicking.

  • Tom Rizzo

    That’s funny, Brian.  You make it sound as if we should eat nuclear waste and rub it on our bodies. Can anyone spot a fallacy (there’s more than one) in Brian’s comment?

    • Darrin Cassidy

      No

    • http://www.facebook.com/daniel.j.pajak Daniel John Pajak

      It seems to me…he makes it sound like you actually ARE ALREADY eating nuclear waste inadvertantly…so what difference does a little more make.  

      He makes an important point about coal.  Coal contains amounts of uranium and other radioactive materials.  Any reliance soley on renewables and energy efficiency leads to continued reliance on fossil fuels (and predominately coal), anyway; due to economic concepts like “The Jevon’s Paradox” and the intermittency of the chief renewables of solar and wind.  So, if anything, nuclear wins as “the least damaging” of realistic energy technologies.