contents
The formal decision for the deep underground repository has been made. The project has been in preparation for decades. SRF Northern Europe employee Bruno Kaufmann has put together the background.
It’s all about this: A historic decision is pending in Sweden – that on the construction of a repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste. Around 12,000 tons of radioactive waste are to be safely stored deep in the ground under an existing nuclear power plant for 100,000 years. Only then is it no longer excessively radioactive. Decades of clarifications preceded the government decision. Since 1977, a Swedish law has stipulated that nuclear power plants may only be operated if there is a solution to the radioactive waste.
This is where the nuclear waste is to be stored: Many possible sites for a nuclear repository have been evaluated over the past decades. But in the end they ended up in the area of existing nuclear power plants in Forsmark, about 100 kilometers north of Stockholm. The first repository for high-level radioactive waste in Sweden is now likely to be built here. Another storage site that has been studied in more detail is in Oskarshamn in the south-east of the country, where a nuclear power plant is also already in operation and where thousands of tons of radioactive waste are currently being stored.
So the decision now comes: Sweden had been governed by a red-green minority government since 2014 – and the Greens opposed the decision on a repository. Only her exit from the government at the end of last year paved the way for the decision. The social-democratic minority government is taking flight to the front when it comes to the nuclear power plant issue. This is also reflected in the fact that Sweden’s Social Democrats support the EU’s proposal to classify nuclear energy as “green”. Last but not least, the party wants to set an example with regard to the elections in autumn.
Here’s why the process took so long: The local population was involved in the search for a repository. The process of finding a location took a correspondingly long time. And because the local population in most places where geologically good conditions would have prevailed opposed a nuclear repository, only those places where there were already nuclear facilities remained. Here the population did not resist a repository. In addition, there were constantly new technical developments, which allowed a certain delay in the construction of a repository.
Here you are already further: In Finland, the first European nuclear repository is scheduled to go into operation in a few years. There, too, the Olkiluoto location was chosen where nuclear power plants have been in operation for decades. From 2025 onwards, nuclear waste from Finnish nuclear power plants is to be safely stored at a depth of 400 meters on the west coast of Finland for at least 100,000 years. Many of the experiences that Finland, which is a few years further advanced, has made in the repository issue are now also helping Sweden with its repository in Forsmark.
This is how it goes after the decision: It will certainly be another ten years before the plant goes into operation in Sweden. Until then, the nuclear waste that has already accumulated and is still being produced will continue to be stored temporarily. From 2030, Sweden should be one of the first countries – together with Finland – to offer a solution for radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.