The announcement of the Social Democratic executive comes after years of procrastination and a few weeks after the departure of the government of environmentalists, opposed to this solution.
The chosen site is located in Forsmark, near one of the two Swedish nuclear power plants in service, about 130 kilometers north of Stockholm, near the Baltic Sea.
Imitate its Finnish neighbor
Stockholm wants to do like Helsinki, Finland, which is currently carrying out a construction site for a landfill, says final
in Eurajoki, on the southwest coast of the country. This one, currently being completed, should receive the first test cargoes in 2023 and be operational in 2025.
The two Nordic countries are the first to have obtained the green light for this type of installation. In France, a landfill project is in the process of being authorized in Bure, in the northeast of the country.
” With Finland, we are the first in the world to take responsibility for our nuclear waste. This will be a safe final storage solution, which provides security for both the environment and the population. »
As in Finland, used fuel rods are first inserted into cast iron cases. These cases are then slipped into 2,800 copper silos which, duly sealed, must theoretically remain airtight for 100,000 years.
500 meters underground, these silos must then be inserted into vertical cavities condemned by large plugs of bentonite, clay with little hardness, very little permeability and flexibility.
Currently, nearly 7,500 tonnes of radioactive waste are stored in a long-term site medium
opened over 40 years ago in Oskarshamn on the Swedish east coast.
The project is led by SKB, a company created by Swedish producers of nuclear electricity to manage waste. The latter greeted a historic decision
when Greenpeace lamented a decision with000years of consequences”,”text”:”100000years of consequences”}}’>100,000 years of consequences.
The environmental NGO denounces too much insecurity
around the solution and a government decision irresponsible
.
