Inside the world's first nuclear waste burial site, a network of tunnels 437m below Finland
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Loading... - Dalila Kettani
- 17 Oct 2022
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Four hundred and thirty-seven metres underground on the southwest coast of Finland, a team of geologists are advising on where to blow holes into two billion-year-old granite.
This is no ordinary science project: buried here in the city’s bedrock is Onkalo, a network of tunnels destined to become the world’s first permanent repository for radioactive waste.
By the time construction is complete in 2120, this toxic graveyard will span 50km of tunnels – some as wide as suburban streets and taller than a double-decker bus. A total of 3,250 copper canisters containing around 6,500 tonnes of spent uranium will be buried here and – hopefully – left undisturbed until the radiation has diminished in 100,000 years.
Nuclear power offers a clean and plentiful source of energy, but it comes with a toxic legacy. High-level waste from spent fuel contains radioactivity that remains dangerous to humans for millennia.
It’s a growing problem: around 263,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel is currently sitting in interim storage facilities, according to International Atomic Energy Agency estimates. Read More...
