Olkiluoto Island, Finland - Underground in a forested area by the Gulf of Bothnia, a 4.8-kilometer winding tunnel descends into the granite bedrock. Finland is preparing to bury nuclear waste at the bottom of this tunnel.
Sometime in the next decade, the first sealed copper canister will be lowered into a vertical borehole in a side tunnel about 427 meters below the surface. There will be nearly 3,000 such canisters, each 5.2 meters long, containing about two tons of spent reactor fuel from Finland's nuclear power industry. As more canisters are buried, the 32 kilometers of boreholes and tunnels will be filled with clay. Eventually, it will be abandoned.
Finland is preparing to bury nuclear waste at the bottom of this tunnel.
The fuel, containing plutonium and other fission products, will remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years—long enough to see new ice ages and other epochal events—but the waste, encased in 5-centimeter-thick copper plates, clay, and the surrounding ancient granite, will not pose a contamination risk to future generations.
Excavation equipment at a site in Finland. Deep in the granite bedrock here, the world's first repository for spent nuclear reactor fuel will be built.
The repository, named Onkalo, will be the world's first permanent disposal site for commercial reactor fuel. It is estimated that over the roughly one century needed to fill the repository, Onkalo will cost about 3.5 billion euros (equivalent to about 3.9 billion US dollars at present). With the support of local and national governments, the project has progressed relatively smoothly over the years.
Nuclear waste management experts say one success factor of the Finnish project lies in the way staff introduced the project to residents most likely to be affected. Staff consulted every community that could potentially host the repository and promised them the right of veto if the site were selected.
Kimmo Kemppainen, research manager of the Onkalo repository project, in a tunnel 427 meters underground.
In Finland, Aikas participated in the site selection process that began in the 1980s. He said he and his colleagues recognized early on the need to consult with local residents.
"We had difficulties because we tried to act according to the normal practice of the industry at the time—everything was decided and announced by us," Aikas said. He also said that when they announced unchangeable decisions, they were met with local opposition every time.
"We soon realized that we needed to adopt a very open strategy. This openness and transparency won us trust," Aikas added. When they selected five sites for further study in 1987, they opened offices in each community to provide information.
The granite bedrock in western Finland will be the final resting place for the country's spent nuclear reactor fuel. A spiraling vehicle tunnel and access and ventilation shafts lead to 427 meters underground. There, the fuel will be stored in 32 kilometers of tunnels for thousands of years.
This strategy proved very successful. By the time the national government made the final decision on the repository in 2000, officials in Eurajoki, the municipality that manages Olkiluoto Island, agreed to act as host, but with one condition: Posiva must not allow the government to choose another site.
Aikas said Eurajoki officials had concerns early in the process, but they eventually recognized that the repository could provide property tax revenue and jobs.
Nearly 3,000 sealed copper canisters will be buried in boreholes at the Onkalo repository, each containing about two tons of high-level radioactive fuel rods.
Finland's success also stems from an early decision by the national government. In 1983, Finland established a principle: the company that produces the waste is responsible for disposing of it. The government only has approval and regulatory responsibilities. The reactor at Olkiluoto belongs to TVO, and the other two reactors belong to Fortum Power and Heat.
Eurajoki also has experience with nuclear power plants: two of Finland's four operating nuclear reactors are located at Olkiluoto, less than 3.2 kilometers from the repository, and a third nuclear plant nearby is under construction. By contrast, Nevada has no nuclear power plants. What it has is a forty-year history of government atomic weapons tests in the air and underground, a process that continued until the early 1990s.
At the nuclear waste repository on Olkiluoto Island, Finland, a worker is drilling a test hole.
This stands in stark contrast to similar efforts in other countries, most notably the United States' attempt to create a deep repository in Nevada. The Yucca Mountain project was designed to handle spent fuel from 75 reactor sites across the United States, and it faced opposition from Nevada lawmakers for years. In 2012, the Obama administration withdrew funding for the project.
Currently, with the support of the nuclear industry and the retirement of Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the project's leading opponent, the Trump administration hopes to restart the project. However, its fate remains uncertain.
Spent fuel from nuclear reactors will be buried 427 meters below a forested area in western Finland.
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