Nuclear waste disposal is one of the major environmental issues of our time. High level nuclear waste in the form of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors is extremely hazardous and needs to be kept from the environment and human beings more than 100,000 years. The Swedish nuclear power industry wants to bury this nuclear waste 500 m underground in bedrock containing upwardly mobile groundwater. Future generations must be protected against the waste and its radioactivity. The repository will also have to withstand at least one ice age. The nuclear industry is eager to build a final repository and have focused their attention on two sites on the Baltic Sea coast, adjacent to nuclear power plants at Forsmark and Oskarshamn.
MKG presently primarily addresses the following issues:
- Does the nuclear industry’s current program for nuclear management satisfy the requirements and objectives set out in modern environmental legislation and Sweden’s international environmental obligations?
- Is the method for final storage of nuclear waste proposed industry the best method from the point of view of long- security? Can it withstand an ice age? MKG wants the industry explore the alternative of disposal in very deep boreholes, to be environmentally safer in the long term.
- Is a coastal site for a final repository a good choice from environmental point of view? Assuming that the nuclear industry’s current method is chosen, MKG wants the industry to consider siting the repository inland site having a downward groundwater drainage pattern may prove environmentally safer in the longer term.
