Radioactive Waste Disposal in the UK.

Now that the UK has given the go-ahead for
the building of new nuclear power stations,
we need to take a look at what it proposes
to do about the industry's number one problem.
How is the UK going to deal with nuclear waste
disposal? About 5% of nuclear power's waste by
volume produces 95% of its radioactivity. In
2006, the Committee for Radioactive Waste
Management (CoRWM) recommended that this dangerous
"high level waste" should be disposed of underground
It would be fixed in a glass matrix
and sealed in steel canisters. The canisters
would then be buried in clay lined and plugged
bore holes that are drilled out of the rock.
Trusting in the cushioning and screening
of the clay and the stability of the rock,
the hot stuff is left to cool down for
however long it takes.

This sounds kind of O.K. until you realise
that there is no provision for inspecting
the canisters to check that they havent failed.
Out of sight, out of mind. A failure, not too
fantastic a possibility even over a short time
span, would cause leakage into the rock and
water table system. One of the nastier waste products,
plutonium 239, takes 24,000 years to loose
half its activity.

Greenpeace's Jean Sorley has denounced the plan as an
environmental time bomb. If, for security reasons,
the canisters need to kept underground, then they
should be stashed in open racks where they can be
readily checked. This also means that if new safe disposal technology arrives,the stored material can be easily retrieved.
The US Yucca mountain underground repository
project offers a proper model that should be adopted
worldwide. Here, with the waste containers in open tunnels,
their is provision for both monitoring and retrieval.
The British CoRWM proposal with neither is nothing more than a cheap and very dangerous folly. It should not be allowed to go ahead.