New nuclear reactor's waste is seven times more hazardous

Posted by jamie - 3 February 2009 at 11:47am - 8 Comments

The construction site of the EPR reactor at Olkiluoto, Finland

The waste from this EPR in Finland will be seven times more hazardous than existing nuclear reactors © Greenpeace/Cobbing

Thanks to Justin at Nuclear Reaction for allowing us to reproduce this scandalous story:

Following the French government's announcement that it wants to build a second EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) comes the news that the nuclear waste produced by this so-called state of the art reactor is far more dangerous than that of ordinary reactors.

The disturbing news was buried on page 137 of the Environmental Impact Assessment prepared by Posiva, the company responsible for managing waste at the world's first EPR currently under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland and also in findings by the National Co-operative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra).

In simple terms, the EPR reactor produces more of a radioactive isotope called Iodine-129 making its waste seven times more hazardous.

Iodine-129 is an isotope worth remembering. The numbers associated with it are staggering. It has a half-life of 16 million years but is still dangerous after more than 160 million years. To put it in context, the human race evolved from apes just five million years ago.

We as a species simply do not have the technology capable of storing this highly dangerous waste for such a huge length of time. Yet again we see how the nuclear industry's claims about a 'clean' and 'safe' energy source are a lie. And that's before we even get to discussing the enormous costs involved in attempting to dispose of this waste in anything close to a safe fashion (let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is in any way achievable).

So, the much heralded EPR, this third-generation, state of the art, flagship beacon of technological triumph is about to make the world a more dangerous place - and not just for us but for those living in the distant future.

That's quite an achievement.

Article tagged as: EPR, finland, iodine 129, nuclear, nuclear power, olkiluoto, posiva
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Comments Commenting is now closed

Just the staggering fact of a half life of 16 million years of emissions should immediately preclude this from being viable.

The continued development of a nuclear power generating industry is the most arrogant, deluded and selfish act mankind is inflicting on future generations.

When will these arrogant people take a breath, and look back on the industrial generation as being something that's happened, but now is over? Just enjoy the memories!

We have to stop squandering our energy, mankind must be responsible right now if we want a World for our Children to live in.

By BB10R - 10 February 2009 at 2:08am

There's a relatively simple solution to most waste problems: vitrification. Quite simply, cast the radioisotopes into glass, and then you can do what you want with it really. It'll survive almost anything, which means it can probably be buried in most locations. Of course, the iodine, which makes up a relatively small portion of the waste, can probably be slung into space anyway; that is, if it ever manages to build up to levels even a tiny fraction of the natural background, that may well have, if the theory of evolution is true, accelerated it. Its simple really.

By nuke the world - 10 February 2009 at 4:46pm

Yah, vitrification certainly gives stability to liquid waste, but there's still the storage issue, which IMO is an unfair legacy of a desperate industrial age to dump on future generations.

By BB10R - 10 February 2009 at 10:08pm

Every time we dig up some soil to do something, we release radiation. People in Cornwall, for example, recieve radiation from the very earth you are trying to protect. A decent long term storage site, for example underneath the Scottish mountains which are huge, geologically stable, low populated and do not contain any useful minerals would be ideal; as running 40C water only erodes 1mm off glass per century, even if we buried the stuff in a stream, then the hills the stream ran through would add far more radioisotopes than the glass. Its not a question of leaky steel drums being dumped in the sea (although the vitrified waste could technically). Surely its better for future generations, probably with higher technology thanks to the 'desperate industrialisation' you mention, would find a few large chunks of glass easier to deal with than the uranium ore scattered throughout the earth. It is even possible to argue that we are doing future generations a favour by taking the long-lived radioisotopes and burning them up quickly; radiation doesn't hang around, so in about 20,000 years there would be less radiation being emitted than there would be if we hadn't gone nuclear. Besides, there was a vast light water cooled/moderated reactor in Oklo, Africa about 1800 million years ago, that produced 15,000 MW of power over its million year operating life. There was no safety standards there, no containment, no arrangements to dispose of the waste. And we're still alive today dispite this.

By nuke the world - 11 February 2009 at 5:55pm

Just the staggering fact of a half life of 16 million years of emissions should immediately preclude this from being viable. The continued development of a nuclear power generating industry is the most arrogant, deluded and selfish act mankind is inflicting on future generations. When will these arrogant people take a breath, and look back on the industrial generation as being something that's happened, but now is over? Just enjoy the memories! We have to stop squandering our energy, mankind must be responsible right now if we want a World for our Children to live in.

By BB10R - 10 February 2009 at 2:08am

There's a relatively simple solution to most waste problems: vitrification. Quite simply, cast the radioisotopes into glass, and then you can do what you want with it really. It'll survive almost anything, which means it can probably be buried in most locations. Of course, the iodine, which makes up a relatively small portion of the waste, can probably be slung into space anyway; that is, if it ever manages to build up to levels even a tiny fraction of the natural background, that may well have, if the theory of evolution is true, accelerated it. Its simple really.

By nuke the world - 10 February 2009 at 4:46pm

Yah, vitrification certainly gives stability to liquid waste, but there's still the storage issue, which IMO is an unfair legacy of a desperate industrial age to dump on future generations.

By BB10R - 10 February 2009 at 10:08pm

Every time we dig up some soil to do something, we release radiation. People in Cornwall, for example, recieve radiation from the very earth you are trying to protect. A decent long term storage site, for example underneath the Scottish mountains which are huge, geologically stable, low populated and do not contain any useful minerals would be ideal; as running 40C water only erodes 1mm off glass per century, even if we buried the stuff in a stream, then the hills the stream ran through would add far more radioisotopes than the glass. Its not a question of leaky steel drums being dumped in the sea (although the vitrified waste could technically). Surely its better for future generations, probably with higher technology thanks to the 'desperate industrialisation' you mention, would find a few large chunks of glass easier to deal with than the uranium ore scattered throughout the earth. It is even possible to argue that we are doing future generations a favour by taking the long-lived radioisotopes and burning them up quickly; radiation doesn't hang around, so in about 20,000 years there would be less radiation being emitted than there would be if we hadn't gone nuclear. Besides, there was a vast light water cooled/moderated reactor in Oklo, Africa about 1800 million years ago, that produced 15,000 MW of power over its million year operating life. There was no safety standards there, no containment, no arrangements to dispose of the waste. And we're still alive today dispite this.

By nuke the world - 11 February 2009 at 5:55pm

GP online