How to dispose of nuclear waste
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the biggest challenges facing the nuclear industry today is how to deal with the lethal radioactive waste which has accumulated over decades. Governments across the world are trying to find a permanent solution to keep the waste safe and secure. Presenter Theo Leggett visits Sweden, where progress is being made with deep geological storage. Maria Fornander from Sweden’s nuclear operator SKB, explains how the waste is initially placed under water, and will then be buried in cast iron 500m underground. Theo visits the Äspö Hard Rock laboratory, where SKB project director Ylva Stenqvist is testing the techniques and equipment. Rolf Persson of the Oskarshamn Municipality, says other countries planning similar ventures could learn from Sweden’s approach. Neil Hiatt, the chief scientific adviser to the UK’s waste management group Nuclear Waste Services, speaks to Theo in Sweden - how might it work in practice? In the UK, similar proposals have faced local opposition, Marianne Birkby runs a pressure group, Radiation Free Lakeland, opposing a possible waste facility in the North of England. And Dr Paul Dorfman, from the University of Sussex, explains why he believes plans for geological disposal are at best premature – and potentially impossible to deliver safely. Producer and presenter: Theo Leggett (Image: Radioactive containers. Copyright: Getty)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the podium, the podcast where Olympic and Paralympic athletes share their remarkable personal journeys. |
| 0:07.2 | It makes you proud to have believed until the end. |
| 0:10.9 | Search for On the Podium. |
| 0:12.3 | We're ready to go. We're ready to have fun. |
| 0:14.1 | We're ready to party. |
| 0:15.1 | Wherever you found, this podcast. |
| 0:25.5 | Dealing with potentially hazardous wastes can be a headache for pretty much any industry. |
| 0:31.4 | But what if those wastes are going to last not just for years or even decades, but for thousands, |
| 0:33.5 | even hundreds of thousands of years? |
| 0:38.6 | I'm Theo Leggett, and today's edition of Business Daily comes to you from hundreds of metres underground at the exquisitely named Hard Rock Laboratory in Aspo in southern Sweden. It's here |
| 0:44.8 | that experiments are being carried out to help the nuclear industry deal with the radioactive |
| 0:49.2 | waste accumulated in more than half a century of nuclear power generation. Because if nuclear power is to have a future, |
| 0:56.6 | it needs to show it can deal with its toxic legacy |
| 0:59.3 | and deal with it for good. |
| 1:06.3 | But we start a little closer to the surface |
| 1:09.0 | in a cavern of mere 40 metres underground. |
| 1:11.9 | It's situated a stone's throw from the town of Oscarsham on Sweden's Baltic coast. |
| 1:17.3 | We have 32 metres of bedrock on top of this roof. |
| 1:21.9 | And here we have two cooling pools and they are 120 metres long and 21 meter wide. Maria Fernanda of Sweden's |
| 1:33.1 | nuclear operator SKB is showing me around a facility that most closely resembles the lair of a James |
| 1:38.9 | Bonneville. Acres of shiny metal surfaces surround deep, clear and still pools, illuminated by an eerie blue light. |
| 1:47.9 | And far beneath the surface lurk hundreds of long metal crates. |
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