Protectia Mediului

Nuclear waste research needs more funding - transmutation still experimental


            The EU is adopting two proposals on legislation to manage radioactive waste and the safe running and decommissioning of nuclear plants. But while European countries prepare to bury their high-level waste, EU commissioners argue that more investment and research is needed to develop more "radical solutions", including the use of a neutron-bombardment process to 'neutralise' highly radioactive waste.

            Scientists at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK/CEN) have been focusing their efforts on improving the chemical separation and transmutation of nuclear waste - a process in which high-activity waste is partially 'neutralised' in an accelerator that reduces the proportion of long-lived radioactive isotopes in the waste by bombarding it with neutrons.

            Transmutation can be used to convert waste containing technetium-99 and iodine-129, very long-lived isotopes that have to be isolated for long periods because they are prone to dissolving in groundwater and moving through the environment. Technetium-99 is converted to technetium-100, which decays in minutes rather than decades. Iodine-129 is similarly converted to a less harmful isotope.

            Transmutation is also effective on long-lived actinides such as plutonium and americium that decay over thousands of years, but actinides are difficult to separate from non-radioactive lanthanides also present in waste that tend to interfere with the transmutation process. Transmutation is at present economically unfeasible for large-scale commercialisation and is not a substitute for deep burial, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency.

            Meanwhile, the European Commission has adopted two proposals for directives on nuclear energy management (see related story). The first covers the safety of nuclear plants from design through to decommissioning, with member states required to set up independent nuclear safety authorities, and the EU to ensure that adequate funds are available to cover the costs of safe decommissioning.

            The second directive on radioactive waste management recommends the geological disposal of high-activity waste i.e. encasing it in glass and burying it underground in stable locations, at present argued to be the safest method of containing hazardous radioactive waste. Countries are required to prepare national disposal programmes and choose disposal sites by 2008, which will have to be operational by 2018. Low-level waste has to be disposed of by 2013.

            The Commission is also working to increase funding for research into nuclear waste management, which it says is currently inadequately financed. In a recent visit to a nuclear plant, Loyola de Palacio, Vice-President of the Commission, said that for nuclear energy to remain an option, the EU must continue to invest in research and monitor nuclear waste storage, where the safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste required "radical solutions". Research programmes would be likely to cost 30 times more than the EU currently spends on research.

            Nuclear power currently meets 35% of the EU's energy needs. To date, the EU has processed two million cubic metres of low-level waste, while high-level waste has being held in intermediate storage facilities for the last 50 years. Although the volumes are low - comprising only 5% of total nuclear waste generated - high-level waste contains 95% of all radioactivity. This type of waste continues to grow, and needs to be transferred to permanent storage sites, said de Palacio.

            European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said that the selection of sites for the deep burial of nuclear waste had already been made in Finland and Sweden, who were now preparing to authorise the construction of underground storage facilities. Countries like France and Belgium were continuing to investigate the best methods of geological disposal, while Germany and the UK were taking a different approach by entering into a public dialogue first, he said.