Although they are nearly at the final depth, the work thus far has been primarily to construct the 4-km long access tunnel. The facility is not scheduled to accept the nuclear waste until 2020 but once it does, it will have enough space for about 7 reactor’s worth of spent fuel for 100-years of their operation. That would put final sealing of the facility in 2120. One interesting thing that caught my attention is that according to Posiva, the agency responsible for facility, after 500 years the radiation dose standing next to one of the canisters would be equivalent to a CAT Scan. [Source: hs.fi via Ontario-geofish]
Geophysics
Hanford nuclear waste retrieval resumes with better technology (GPR)
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) imaging of the subsurface tied to GPS mapping will allow the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company to have a better idea of what is buried at the site before excavating for […]
Project Related
Swedish Nuclear Waste Repository Could Begin Construction in 2016
ENR reports that a nuclear waste repository for spent nuclear fuel in Sweden could begin construction as early as 2016. The facility would consist of 50km of tunnels in granite bedrock up to 500-m deep. […]
Project Related
Inside Finland’s Nuclear Waste Repository
Finland has the world’s first commercial underground nuclear waste repository, and construction of the access works, infrastructure, and the first five disposal tunnels is essentially complete. I haven’t seen a timeline of when they will […]