Sweden has started building a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, becoming only the second country in the world to embark on such a project. The site is designed to store highly radioactive waste securely for the next 100,000 years.
The challenge of safely storing deadly radioactive waste has plagued the nuclear industry since commercial reactors began operating in the mid-20th century. Finland is currently the only country close to completing a permanent repository.
According to the World Nuclear Association, approximately 300,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel worldwide require long-term disposal, with most of it currently stored in cooling pools near the reactors that produced it.
In addition to managing existing spent fuel, several countries in Europe and beyond plan to build new reactors to provide electricity for the transition away from fossil fuels.
The Forsmark repository, located about 150 kilometers north of Stockholm on Sweden’s eastern coast, will consist of 60 kilometers of tunnels buried 500 meters deep in 1.9-billion-year-old rock.
The facility is designed to be the final resting place for 12,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel. The waste will be encased in five-meter-long copper canisters resistant to corrosion, sealed in clay, and placed in the tunnels.
The repository is expected to receive its first waste by the late 2030s but will not be fully completed until 2080, when the tunnels will be sealed and closed, according to Sweden’s nuclear fuel and waste management company (SKB).