Finland can be the first country in the world to bury nuclear waste permanently

Along with his colleagues, Ginshan Ban, Professor of Employment Science at the Cole Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, published a Ticket In January 2023, the risk of sulfide in the groundwater that erods copper used for consuming nuclear fuel containers. “More work is needed to determine (…) the nature and chemistry of the surface films that develop on the surfaces of copper in the warehouse conditions,” the paper says.

Although Posiva Oy seems to have the first warehouse, other countries follow their progress. Sweden, adjacent, is also preparing to start working on its own warehouse, which aims to contain up to 12,000 metric tons of Swedish nuclear fuel. It is expected to extend more than 60 kilometers of the tunnel as soon as it ends, at a depth of 500 meters. It is a major work on the drawing table for 40 years and obtained his environmental decisions necessary for construction just a few months ago. Building can start over the next decade and will continue until the 1980s, as the area of ​​this underground warehouse – made by a call made by the nuclear waste review office, which is a Swedish NGO, does not slow down or stop the work. Fears about the Swedish project are the same as with the Finnish project: the risk of copper cans, and may lead to the release of radioactive elements in the groundwater.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Canada also plans to build a storage facility. The warehouse has not yet existed, but it seems that the path forward is relatively empty of obstacles – at least no clear legal factors. After 14 years of dialogue and discussions, the relevant bodies and citizens chose a host location within the town of Ignace, Ontario, part of the Wabigon Lake Ojibway Nation community. Both the city and the nation were open to the project, as it saw it as a source of new investments and jobs.

France and Switzerland are also working on projects, as they make progress, even if many of them are the issue of overcoming bureaucratic obstacles. In the Meusee area in northeastern France, field work on Sigio Project It can start in 2027 now after receiving a positive evaluation of its safety. The executive company Andra was authorized to continue the plans, providing it with a greater consideration of the potential effect of climate change on the structures above the ground.

It took cooperation in Switzerland, Nagra, 14 years old to locate their storage facility. She chose to build a warehouse north of Zurich, in Nordelic Ligran, because it is a specially rich area of ​​ooaline, and is ideal for acting as a long -term container of radioactive materials. (Finland is also rich in this article.) The final approval is expected to be around 2030, according to a referendum, and the warehouse must start working by 2060.

Finally, Italy is studying 51 sites that can be suitable for hosting a warehouse for storing nuclear waste. These plans were first placed in 2015 and then published in December 2023. The government has since decided to reopen the application to accommodate new requests. Meanwhile, radioactive waste in the country is still stored in temporary warehouses in the locations of engraved nuclear power plants, nuclear research facilities, nuclear medicine and industry sites.

This story was originally appeared on Wireless Italy It was translated from Italian.