Europeans eye deep underground nuclear waste repositories

(SAN DIEGO) - The European Union is moving ahead with plans to dispose of nuclear waste directly underground, with the first site due to be up and running in Finland, waste management experts said Friday.

Finland's deep geological repository for direct, underground disposal of spent nuclear fuel is due to come onstream in 2020, experts who addressed a forum at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have said in a "vision paper."

Sweden will follow three years after its Nordic neighbor, and "France plans to start operating a deep geological repository for vitrified high-level waste13 from reprocessing in 2025," the paper says.

Other countries in the EU, where some 145 reactors were operating in 15 countries as of 2007, and nearly one third of the electricity consumed is produced by nuclear power, are also expected to unveil plans in the coming decades for deep geological nuclear waste repositories.

The forum on what to do with the growing volume of nuclear waste produced largely by power plants comes days after US President Barack Obama announced plans to build the first new nuclear power plants on US soil in nearly 30 years.

On the same day as Obama made the announcement, the Department of Energy was granted a stay on license applications for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in Nevada.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu in late January tasked a high-level commission with finding a solution for managing used nuclear fuel and weapons waste in the United States. Chu excluded the panel from considering the Yucca Mountain site, which is sacred ground to some native Americans.

The European experts say in their vision paper: "A growing consensus both in Europe and in other parts of the world is that deep geological disposal is the most appropriate solution for long-term management of spent fuel, high-level waste, and other long-lived radioactive wastes."