• Gloria@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    10 days ago

    Another crazy part is also the decomissioning. All the highly and slightly contaminated material from dismantling an old atom plant is mind numbing. Germany is right now dismantling their last Plants (german source) and is confronted with these cost and e.g. France also will have to invest dozens to hundrets of billions for all their plants to decomission (and store the waste) in the next 20-40 years.

    [In Germany] The demolition of the nuclear ruins will take decades. Today, around 120,000 cubic meters of low and medium-level radioactive waste are waiting for their final resting place in interim storage facilities. By 2050, another 180,000 cubic meters are expected to be added. The biggest waste problem is the highly radioactive legacy. When the last German nuclear power plant is shut down at the end of this year[2022], there will probably be around 27,000 cubic meters - around 1,900 containers of waste that will remain dangerous for many hundreds of thousands of years.

    Also in another Article:

    construction began on Sweden’s first final repository for spent nuclear fuel at the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Östhammar municipality. The facility, which will be one of the first of its kind globally, will store nuclear fuel waste for up to 100,000 years.

    Sweden currently has six active nuclear reactors that together produce between 90 and 150 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually. This waste is currently stored in Oskarshamn, but will eventually be moved to the final repository in Forsmark. When the repository is sealed in 2090, it is estimated to hold about 12,000 tons (180,000 cubic metres) of nuclear fuel waste, encapsulated in copper and surrounded by bentonite clay, placed 500 meters below the ground surface.

    The decomission Waste from the german plants alone could fill the swedish storage twice. And France has 50+ atom plants that have to me dismantled at some point.