Major problems at a salt mine where 126,000 drums of radioactive debris are stored are fuelling public distrust of long-term waste disposal plans, reports Fred Pearce from Asse, Germany
Enough plutonium-bearing radioactive waste is stored here to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools. When engineers backfilled the chambers containing 126,000 drums in the 1970s, they thought they had put it out of harm’s way forever.
But now, the walls of the Asse mine are collapsing and cracks forming, thanks to pressure from surrounding rocks. So the race is on to dig it all up before radioactive residues are flushed to the surface.
A short film by a government advisory body carries a stark message: the nation faces a crisis over storing its spent nuclear fuel after running reactors for decades.
From the August 2009 Scientific American Magazine | 40 comments Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the answer to the U.S.'s nuclear waste problem, but after 22 years and $9 billion, that vision is dead. Now, some say that doing nothing in the near term ma
Ecomafia: le “navi a perdere” e lo smaltimento illegale delle scorie radioattive. Navi che affondano, rifiuti che spariscono: un business da miliardi di euro. Le denunce di Legambiente e del WWF. Lo strano caso della motonave Rosso. Carlo Lucarelli.
“Dobbiamo scongiurare il rischio – ha sottolineato Cogliati Dezza – che questa vicenda venga sottovalutata, mentre in realtà è in ballo il futuro dell’ambiente, del turismo, della legalità, dell’economia. C’è bisogno di un forte segnale che dia speranza a
Cadarache. World Nuclear News 15 Oct 09. "France's nuclear regulator has suspended decommissioning and castigated a plant operator after discovering that plutonium inventory was much higher than thought. The plant owner has now contradicted the regulator
Acronym Institute's Disarmament Diplomacy, Nov 2002: "On August 22 [2002], a substantial amount of weapons-grade uranium was removed from a nuclear reactor in Serbia to a site in Russia. Details of the operation were provided by the US State Department on
The weapons-grade plutonium from the Serbian research reactor Vinca could (have) be(en) used as a radiological weapon. That plutonium, too, is (or was) a kind of radioactive waste.
Greenpeace, le 14 octobre 2009. - « Nous estimons que la découverte, à Cadarache, de plusieurs kilos de plutonium ayant échappés à tout inventaire constitue une des situations les plus graves et les plus critiques que l'on ait pu rencontrer dans une inst
"Slutförvaret för Sveriges utbrända kärnbränsle bör placeras vid Forsmark i Östhammars kommun. Det beskedet gav Svensk Kärnbränslehantering den 3 juni [2010]. Här hittar du vår samlade rapportering kring frågan om ett slutförvar. Det slutgiltiga beslutet
Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates (NWAA), a group of experts with over 200 years of collective experience of the issues involved in nuclear waste, have submitted detailed written evidence to the House of Commons' Energy and Climate Change Select Committee
contrary to myth, reprocessed French waste is not “recycled.” The hottest waste, about 4 percent of the total, is stored at La Hague, along with about 81 tonnes of separated – and proliferation-friendly – plutonium (1 percent of the total). The remaining
Terrapower. 13 February 2010. "Today we are always refueling the reactor so lot of controls and lots of things that can go wrong," Gates said. "That is not good. With this, you have a piece of fuel, think of it like a log, that burns for 60 years and it