Today, MKG together with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation [SSNC] submit a consultation document to the Swedish power industry’s nuclear waste company SKB, giving their views on the choice of site for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel. In the next couple of months, the power industry will make a decision regarding the site and this document presents their view of the current knowledge on the matter. It is the joint opinion of MKG and SSNC that the power industry is not ready to make such a decision. There are many uncertainties concerning the proposed method of disposal, which makes any decision regarding the actual location problematic since these issues have to be addressed and resolved before the conditions of a location can be determined in the first place. In other words: since the ideal conditions cannot be established, an ideal site cannot be chosen. What is more, MKG and SSNC argues that locations that are in fact better from an environmental point of view do exist in Sweden, and that the process of deciding on a location that has been going on since the 70’s has not resulted in the highest possible environmental security.
Today, MKG and SSNC submit a joint consultation document to the Swedish power industry’s nuclear waste company SKB. The document concerns the choice of site, a decision of which the industry intends to make in the next couple of months. In this document MKG and SSNC brings out the following considerations:
- The choice of method precedes the choice of site. The method has not been chosen, hence, the site cannot be chosen. Therefore, SKB should look into alternative methods with an open mind and lay the question of site to rest until a method has in fact been chosen.
- It is important that the operator Svensk kärnbränslehantering AB, SKB, does not rush into a premature decision. In terms of sufficient environmental security, there are great uncertainties regarding the artificial barriers of copper and clay that constitute the foundation of the method chosen by SKB. Furthermore, the two sites are very different from a geological and hydrological point of view, which in turn affects the function of the artificial barriers. To decide on a location before these effects are clearly mapped does not constitute a reasonable act by a serious operator.
- Even if the operator’s present method of choice, the KBS method, is in fact chosen as the method for disposal of spent nuclear fuel, it is safe to say that better sites than the two surveyed in Oskarshamn and Östhammar do exist.
- The process of deciding on a location has not put focus on the long-term environmental security, which has led the operator, SKB, to survey two poorly suited sites situated in the immediate vicinity of existing nuclear power plants.
