Nuclear waste management

Nuclear power is often touted as being the fuel of the future and a way of reducing human made carbon dioxide but it’s not without its problems. Nuclear waste is difficult to store.

France stores all of its low and medium level radioactive material at a site in the champagne region. Indeed, it’s the world’s largest storage site of low and medium level radioactive material.  

The waste arrives either in barrels or in big plastic bags, depending on its radioactivity. Parts of old nuclear power plants are compacted to reduce their volume, liquid waste is solidified for safer storage.  The company responsible for the task, ANDRA, says the site is secure, even if some emissions are inevitable.

"It’s true that our activity creates liquid or gas emissions, but never more than the authorised levels. What’s important is the impact of those emissions. Even for people who live their whole lives beside this site the emissions represent just one millionth of natural radioactivity in the atmosphere," notes Patrick Torres, director of the site.  

Even short term waste has to be stored for 300 years. Open less than two decades, some locals say the site is already posing problems saying that while individually the barrels of waste might not pose too big a danger, the accumulation of small doses is a worry.  'I'm not an expert but I can make simple observations. If you look at how many people have thyroid problems and how much cancer there is here compared to the national average; there is five times more here,” points out anti nuclear activist, Michel Guéritte of the Association La QV (La Qualité de la Vie). 

Mr Guéritte’s fears echoed somewhat across in Germany. There medium level nuclear waste buried in the 1970s is starting to cause concern as cracks appear in the cave in which it’s stored.  

Some 40 years ago German scientists thought they had found the perfect place for dangerous waste, an abandoned salt mine some 700 meters underground.  The country proceeded to dump 126,000 barrels of radioactive waster into the mine’s cavities. However cracks have appeared in the plan and the cave and the mine’s security pillars are now bent. What’s more, water has seeped in creating a lethal toxic pool. The water is contaminated and so must now be contained. Villagers nearby are not happy. They’ve started to erect the letter 'A' as in 'Atomic danger' on walls and doors. 

Across in Spain it’s a whole other atmosphere in the village of Villar de Canas.  There, locals are doing everything they can to win the right to house a nuclear dump.  

This small village located between Madrid and Valencia is an official candidate for the location of a Centralised Temporary Storage site on its land - the place where the Industry Ministry would send all Spain’s nuclear waste.

The man who initiated the villages’ candidacy bid is Jose Maria, a blacksmith and the villages’ mayor for the last 16 years. He thinks storing nuclear waste here is a dream chance to create jobs and is making the nuclear storage facility his priority. The State is promising 700,000 euros in subsidies, which could be invested to curb the rural exodus here: in 30 years, the village has lost three-quarters of its residents. Environmentalists however are not happy and are hoping by lobbying at a national level they can nevertheless prevent this project from seeing the light of day.