United Nations Radio

Grimsel Underground Laboratory

PRESENTER: Several countries that have nuclear technology are studying how best to safely store spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. They met recently during the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. After two decades of research, Sweden has announced that in 2023 it will begin operating an underground repository at a site north of the capital, Stockholm. To find out more, the IAEA's Louise Potterton sat down with Peter Wikberg of SKB, the company which manages Sweden's nuclear waste:

WIKBERG: The spent fuel will go back to the surrounding where it was initially taken from. It's very radioactive from the beginning, and we want to bury it deep underground until the radiation is no longer there and all activity has depleted. The fuel is put into canisters which are then sealed, and the canisters are transported to the repository site where we then have constructed the tunnel system down at 500 metres level. The canisters will be placed in holes that are drilled into the floor of the tunnels, and then they are backfilled with a special type of clay and all the tunnels are refilled afterwards.

POTTERTON: Now you have the site selected, but how did the local people react to this?

WIKBERG: The siting process was based on the fact that we need to have, of course, good geological conditions for the repository. But we also wanted to have the acceptance by the people living in the area. We conducted pre-studies in eight municipalities around Sweden, and then we selected three of them for more detailed investigations. Now we have carried out the investigations in two of them, and both these municipalities were very eager also to be the say the 'winning' site at the end when we selected.

POTTERTON: Is the idea to fill the repository and then seal it because some energy analysts would say that this is a valuable resource, it shouldn't just be seen as waste, and maybe future generations could use this spent fuel?

WIKBERG: The thought behind SKB's disposal is that we should take the responsibility for the waste that we have produced. We handle it in such a way that no one, not even the next coming generations after us, need to bother about it. But on the other hand, if there are new ideas about what to make out of it, there is a lot of energy disposed of in the repository. And depending on what will be the situation-it could very well be so that within sometime in the future people would make a different decision not to seal the repository but to bring up the canisters that have already been disposed of.

PRESENTER: Peter Wikberg, Research Director for Safety and Science at SKB: the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company.

Producer:  IAEA's Louise Potterton
Duration:  2'35"