NO ONE WANTS NUCLEAR WASTE
It is ironic that despite having created radioactive nuclear waste, none of the first world nations wants it stored anywhere close by. Parliaments in the US and Europe are stalled as their populations refuse to have a deep final repository for nuclear waste in their neighbourhoods.
A long-term solution to the problem of storing radioactive waste that has a half-life of thousands of years has stumped the “rocket scientists” who created it. The first deep final repository is supposed to be commissioned some time after 2010, but many people are unhappy with the idea of simply ending responsibility for the waste.
Scientists have considered burying radioactive waste at sea under a “stable abyssal plain” that would slowly carry the waste downward into the Earth’s mantle or even burial under a remote natural or man-made island. And if this sounds like sweeping the dust under the rug – that’s because it is.
Fortunately at the moment, radioactive waste cannot legally be dumped at sea because it is prohibited by the Law of the Sea and the people of the US and Europe are also fearful that radioactive leaks will cause widespread damage. This concern has been proven to be a valid one after dumping waste from ships contaminated islands in the Pacific. But the sea may still be considered by individual countries or groups of countries that cannot find other solutions.
Some scientists have suggested disposing of radioactive waste by launching it into outer space, but there are obvious disadvantages here. There is the potential for failure of a launch vehicle that would be catastrophic to say the least and the number of launches required makes this impractical.
If this were not bad enough, many incidents have already occurred while attempting to dispose of radioactive material. It has been improperly disposed of, had defective shielding during transport, been simply abandoned or stolen from storage. In the former Soviet Union, a dust storm blew radioactive waste stored in a lake all over the place because the lake had dried out. To this day, people driving through the area are not allowed to stop their cars for any reason. In other cases, lakes or ponds containing radioactive waste accidentally overflowed into rivers during storms.
Scavenging of radioactive material has caused radiation exposure – mostly in developing nations, where dangerous substances are less regulated and education about radioactivity and its hazards more scanty. Where there is a market for scavenged goods and scrap metal, the value of the material outweighs the danger. Irresponsibility on the part of the radioactive material’s owners, lack of regulation, or lack of its enforcement have led to radiation exposures in places such as Goiania, Brazil.
High Level Waste (HLW) accounts for over 95 per cent of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. This is stored temporarily in spent fuel pools and in dry cask storage facilities. Long-term storage of radioactive waste needs the waste to be stabilized into a form which will not react or degrade for a very, very long time.
Unfortunately nuclear scientists do not have the solution for disposal of waste that lasts for thousands of years and while dumping sites in first world countries fill up, these countries look elsewhere for a long-term burial site. Hopefully it is not in Africa’s backyard. South Africans should seriously consider the problems caused by a nuclear programme before considering building 24 reactors. Obviously it is easier to stop creating the waste than to deal with all the problems it creates.
Yours sincerely
INGELA RICHARDSON
