By Lindsay Potter
The United Kingdom is considering an unprecedented deep-sea Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) under the sea floor for high-level radioactive waste, currently estimated to cost $83 billion and take 150 years to build — making it the “biggest, longest-lasting, and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the U.K.,” according to the London Telegraph. The GDF would be a 3,500-foot-deep shaft with multiple tunnels to be filled and then sealed with cement. The London Telegraph reports that the shaft would connect to “huge vaults … excavated in the impermeable clays … scientists hope could provide a last resting place for Britain’s nuclear legacy.” The proposed sites are off the coast of Lincolnshire or off the coast of Cumbria, both areas dependent on tourism.
Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University Dr. Steven Thomas said, “these [cost] estimates are no more than a wild guess.” For now, contractor Nuclear Waste Services Co. (NWS) anticipates storing 26 million cubic feet of waste — 750,000 cubic feet are currently awaiting burial and the rest is estimated waste to be accumulated by the U.K.’s next generation of nuclear reactors. The waste includes 110,000 tons of uranium and 120 tons of plutonium. Uranium-238 takes 4.5 billion years for half to decay. Neil Hyatt, NWS’s chief scientific advisor, points out the waste will be deadly likely beyond the end of our civilization. “We’re talking about a piece of infrastructure that’s going to go with us on a journey into the future, for as far forward [in time] as homo sapiens has existed,” he said. Claire Corkhill, professor of radioactive waste management at Bristol University, who is also a member of the Government’s advisory Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, said, “We owe it to future generations to ensure that we have a solution for the radioactive waste generated from new nuclear power stations before we start producing it.”
— Le Show, May 12; electricityinfo.org, May 6; London Telegraph, May 5, 2024
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