Sweden’s radiation safety agency on Wednesday offered a show of support for plans to establish a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel near the east coast village of Forsmark.
“The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority has assessed that the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) has the potential to comply with the Authority’s nuclear safety and radiation protection requirements for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel,” the agency said in a press release. “Consequently, the Authority recommends in its statement of findings to the land and environmental court that the repository system should be deemed a permissible activity according to the Swedish Environmental Code.”
Specifically, the agency found that SKB had made the case for choosing Forsmark as the top location among several considered for the site; has shown why its planned disposal system – which involves placing fuel pellets within copper canisters that are stored underground in Bentonite clay within bedrock — is better than other methods; and has demonstrated that it can build and manage encapsulation and repository facilities in line with national radiation safety mandates.
The company is seeking licenses for the Forsmark repository, within the municipality of Östhammar, along with a facility to encapsulate the fuel in copper and cast iron, to be located in the nearby municipality of Oskarshamn.
The Radiation Safety Authority and the land and environmental court are scheduled next year to issue their final evaluations of the plan to the national government, which largely has final say on approval. Oskarshamn and Östhammar, though, can veto the application, World Nuclear News reported.
“The Authority carries out a stepwise authorisation process, which means that if the Swedish Government decides that a licence is to be granted, we will at each stage in the process examine whether SKB’s repository fulfils our safety requirements,” Ansi Gerhardsson, agency head of section, said in the release. “For future authorisation steps, SKB will need to carry out further development of its safety analysis report to demonstrate the repository’s radiological long-term safety.”
The storage facility would be designed to hold up to 12,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Roughly 6,000 metric tons of spent fuel are now stored at an interim storage site in Oskarshamn. Sweden has 10 operational nuclear power reactors, each of which produces roughly 20 metric tons of spent fuel annually.
If approved, construction of the facility would begin in the early 2020s, according to SKB. It would take about a decade to begin storage operations at the site.