Nuclear waste: is everything under control? – Special six-page edition (2007-02) of the Environemntal Alert Bulletin of the United Nations Environmental Program.
50 years after the opening of the world’s first civil nuclear power station, very little radioactive waste produced has been permanently disposed of. Moreover, the average age of today’s reactors is approximately 22 years, meaning most of them will be decommissioned over the next decades. All of these wastes will have to be disposed of even if no more nuclear reactors are built. But is it wise to take further advantage of the “nuclear path”, without proven and widely-utilized solutions to the problem of nuclear waste?
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The threat of global warming has given a boost to the nuclear industry in many countries as one way to provide electricity without increasing carbon emissions. But what to do with the nuclear waste, especially the most toxic form – spent nuclear fuel. Nick Thorpe went to see how Bulgaria is coping.
Kiril Nikolov smiles a big, nuclear smile. (more…)
The Labour leadership team at Cumbria county council has agreed to make an “expression of interest” that would pinpoint an area around the Lake District as the most likely place for Britain’s first high-level nuclear waste dump.
The controversial move was taken on a vote of the council’s inner cabinet amid allegations democracy was being stifled and despite a warning from a top scientist that new studies showed a link between atomic sites and incidents of cancer. (more…)
Persuading local residents that they should nuclear waste in their backyard is not an easy job. But that’s exactly what officials from the Federal Energy Office are doing. They are touring the country, holding information sessions in the regions identified as possible storage sites. One of the candidates is Wellenberg. That particularly upsets voters in canton Nidwalden since they have twice turned down a proposal to build a nuclear waste repository in Wellenberg. Vincent Landon went to a public meeting in Stans and has this report. (more…)
The first 16 barrels of low and medium radioactivity waste were deposited at Hungary’s new nuclear waste facility “Radioaktív Hulladékokat Kezelő Közhasznú” at Bataapati (SW) on Tuesday.
The country’s sole nuclear power plant at Paks (C) produces some 900 barrels of radioactive waste a year, of which a truckload is planned to be forwarded to Bataapati each day, Jozsef Hegyhati, head of the radioactive waste management company (RHK) told MTI. (more…)
HIGHLAND Councillors in the Far North will next month make their minds up about a new, low-active nuclear dump planned for Dounreay.
The development earmarked for land to the immediate south of the licensed site is being tabled at a meeting in Halkirk on December 17. (more…)
Finland and Sweden are working on technology for the safe burial of nuclear waste in bedrock. A partly Finnish-designed machine was on display at the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden. The purpose of the device is to transport the dangerous materials deep into caverns excavated for the purpose.
The highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel needs to be isolated for at least 100,000 years.
Sweden is preparing to bury a total of about 12,000 tonnes of radioactive uranium waste. (more…)
MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (UPI) — An uncompleted project to clean up a radioactive former dump in a densely populated Moscow suburb is endangering the health of residents, advocates say.
A mound along Marshala Rokossovskogo Boulevard that for years was used by children as a sledding hill actually contained radioactive waste dumped there in the 1940s and 1950s, and after beginning an excavation to enable the building of new apartments on the site, officials have suspended the operation, the Moscow Times reported Tuesday. (more…)
A growing number of people are warming to nuclear power and more people now favour it rather than oppose it, according to a new YouGov survey for EDF Energy, the French nuclear power operator.
The survey, to be published tomorrow, shows that 53 per cent of the 4,449 people who took part in the online poll are now in favour of nuclear power stations to replace old ones. This compares with 46 per cent last year, and 41 per cent the previous year. At the same time 62 per cent agree that nuclear is needed as part of a balanced energy source for the UK compared with 59 per cent last year, and 54 per cent in 2006. (more…)
BERLIN (AP) — Almost 15,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators protested Saturday against a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste being transported to a storage site in northern Germany, police said.
German police were working to free three demonstrators who had chained themselves to railway tracks near the western city of Woerth, preventing the shipment from crossing from France into Germany. (more…)
MOSCOW. Nov 6 (Interfax) – The Federal Technological, Environmental and Atomic Supervisory Service has completed an inspection of the Mayak plant based in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. No violations of nuclear, radiation and technological safety have been exposed, the service said.
The inspectors verified control over nuclear materials, radioactive substances and waste and physical protection of the plant. (more…)
