WHAT to do with highly radioactive waste is one of the big unsolved problems facing countries with nuclear reactors. The timescales are daunting, the science challenging and the politics intractable. Everyone who has seriously looked at how to dispose of this stuff reaches the same conclusion: put it down a deep hole (see 鈥淏ury waste, again鈥�).
In the US, tunnels under Yucca Mountain in Nevada are being readied to take waste from civil reactors. Deep repositories are also under investigation in 10 other countries, led by Sweden and Finland. No surprise then that advisers to the UK government recommended last week that the best destination for hot residues from the UK鈥檚 nuclear power and weapons programmes is 鈥済eological disposal鈥�. What is disturbing is that it has taken the UK so long to arrive at such an obvious outcome. The country first opted for deep disposal nearly 30 years ago and has pursued that goal ever since. Three attempts to research potential underground sites have failed.
Last week鈥檚 report from the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) does have valuable things to say about deciding where to bury the waste. Local communities must be willing to host the repository, it says, and should receive rewards of some kind in return. Everything about the process must be open, including selection of potential sites, scientific investigations and every stage of decision-making. There is no excuse for repeating past mistakes, when scientific results were guarded with obsessive secrecy. Even with these safeguards, CoRWM accepts that the procedure may yet fail for social, ethical or technical reasons.
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Sadly, the committee does not express a preference for the type of geology in which the repository should be built, saying only that a third of the UK could be suitable. It has also failed so far to agree whether the waste, should be retrievable. The committee is split, with some members arguing that retrievability would benefit future generations and others saying it would burden them.
The implications of CoRWM鈥檚 conclusions go far beyond merely dealing with waste. Tony Blair鈥檚 government is deciding whether to build new reactors, and he has said this cannot happen until a plan exists for disposing of radioactive waste. Some advocates of nuclear power will doubtless argue that CoRWM has now provided that plan. This is optimism gone mad. Deciding to put waste down a hole, with no idea what form the repository should take or where it should be, is no more of a plan than has existed for the past 30 years.
