Photo: W. Wildi / swisstopo.ch

By Marcos Buser & Walter Wildi

This article looks at radioactive waste management from a general perspective and in relation to current technical developments. In blog (a), the development of new nuclear techniques for electricity generation is considered in the light of the safety requirements of operating and disposal systems and the objectives of the circular economy. This perspective represents a fundamental paradigm shift in the direction and development of nuclear energy.

Blog (b) highlights the current situation as well as possible developments and alternatives for the nuclear waste management programme in Switzerland. It shows that the current strategy of burying and forgetting about radioactive waste is not an acceptable option and that, particularly for highly radioactive waste, a path is emerging for its transformation into less hazardous waste with a shorter half-life. Deep geological disposal would then become obsolete.

A worrying legacy

For decades, radioactive waste has been the subject of controversy in society. Indeed, the management of radioactive substances resulting from the use of nuclear energy around the world is a horror story.

In the early days of nuclear energy, radioactive waste was deposited in an uncontrolled manner in abandoned mines, dumped in rivers or submerged and diluted in the sea. Social protests and scientific concerns eventually led waste producers to look for better solutions. They found it in the concept of final disposal mines in the geological subsoil. For more than 50 years, research and projects in this field have been underway throughout the world. All the national projects aim to protect the radioactive inventory by means of several artificial and natural barriers and to delay the release, transport and emission of radioisotopes into the environment for periods of up to a million years.

While project promoters and the authorities favour this disposal model, there are fundamental doubts about the ability of this burial and oblivion strategy to satisfy the principles of sustainable management of raw materials and waste.

Until the final geological repositories are built and closed in 100 years or more, the accumulated radioactive inventory will largely lie in intermediate repositories, in inadequately protected structures on the surface. And let’s not forget the mining waste from uranium mines, scattered over five continents and deposited in an uncontrolled manner, poisoning their respective environments. The situation is simply unsustainable and intolerable.

At the same time, the social debate on the ageing of the world’s nuclear fleet and the increasingly risky operating conditions of these facilities continues. The imminent closure of older reactors is raising questions about the possible replacement of these production facilities. Two questions are therefore back in the social spotlight today: can countries’ energy needs, estimated today for the future, be met solely by renewable production techniques? Or do we need to develop other technologies – including new nuclear power stations – to cover growing electricity needs? The confrontation between these two options, which has been going on for years in democratic industrialised countries around the world, is intensifying again today.

Whatever the outcome of this debate on the “yes” or “no” to nuclear energy, what must ultimately count in the choice of a new path is the definitive prevention of the risks that the operation of nuclear facilities and the production of radioactive waste can pose to mankind and the environment throughout the life cycle of radioactive substances.

Seeking alternatives

It is now a truism that humanity is living on a massive scale beyond its means, to the detriment of future generations and a healthy environment. One of the most worrying, but also one of the most enduring, developments in today’s industrialised world concerns waste in all its breadth and depth. The massive production of plastic waste, pesticides, special waste and nuclear waste is just one of these developments and just one aspect of the fundamental problem. Industrial products and processes have been, and still are, too little considered from the point of view of their manufacture, for which the consequent problems such as waste are accepted with a shrug of the shoulders. “It has to go somewhere” is a common response to the need to dispose of highly toxic waste: this is how the Green Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, put it in 2011, in connection with the launch of the German procedure for finding sites for highly radioactive waste in Germany[1]. Even at the highest level, no alternative to this unsustainable disposal strategy is being considered or examined, let alone developed. We accept what has been and continue to live with the material constraints we have inherited. What comfortable, thoughtless, impotent action!

Yet there are alternatives to the indiscriminate dumping of highly toxic waste in old or recently opened mines in the geological subsoil. A central question is whether it is not possible to prevent the release of hazardous substances and groups of substances from technical processes and products before they are used on a large scale and end up in the environment as problematic waste. CFCs, POPs, including the “dirty twelves” such as DDT, PCBs, etc., PFASs, HAAs and SMAs, and all the other acronyms, show the extent to which technology is shirking responsibility for its long-term legacy.

This fundamental question also applies to the new reactor technologies currently being developed and discussed. The zoo of reactors[2], which has been the subject of debate around new nuclear reactors for the past decade, addresses precisely this fundamental question. Can and does our society want to obtain the electricity it needs from reactors that can be operated without risk of accident and that leave no long-term waste? And is it prepared to guarantee comprehensive planning and safe implementation of radioactive waste disposal? These are key questions facing societies around the world today, and they define a central dividing line between technical immobility and the quest for short-term returns on the one hand, and sustainability on the other. The path towards a circular economy is also leading to a fundamental paradigm shift that should profoundly transform technology and society, and which is being put to the test at socio-political level. This also applies to nuclear technology and its current legacy.

What future for nuclear waste management?

Like its sister organisations around the world, Nagra is pursuing a waste management strategy in Switzerland that began to take hold more than half a century ago. At the time of the popular vote on the 1978 Federal Decree on the Atomic Energy Act, the cooperative received a mandate for the “final disposal” of radioactive waste, which has now led it to submit an application for general authorisation in 2024 (see part 2). But in the meantime, after 50 years of work, the initial mandate has in fact become obsolete:

– in the waste sector too, there has long been talk of a circular economy, and wasting resources is definitely an outdated model;

– in the case of high-level radioactive waste (HLW), technical possibilities for immobilising and treating or transforming the waste are becoming increasingly apparent. Under these conditions, burial and oblivion are no longer an option;

– for low- and intermediate-level waste (L/ILW), a new debate is needed on the issues of waste treatment and long-term interim storage. The short-term interim storage originally planned has long since been overtaken by the delay in waste management programmes.

If the programmes had been successfully pursued as originally announced, we would probably be in the disposal phase according to the Swiss EKRA concept. Instead, the waste is often in a deplorable state in so-called interim storage facilities.

Of course, new nuclear technologies give rise to fears that the technical transformation of HLW will pave the way for a new series of nuclear power plants. But what are we afraid of with reactors in operation? Firstly, of

a) reactor meltdown ;

b) highly toxic, long-lived waste;

c) the general environmental impact and social damage caused by nuclear power plants.

However, new technologies are currently being developed to transform existing highly radioactive waste (in particular spent fuel) into less toxic, short-lived waste, thereby making deep geological repositories with a lifespan of up to a million years superfluous. The plan is to use accelerators to bombard long-lived isotopes with neutrons. This also generates energy. Serious accidents are de facto impossible: if difficulties arise, the electrical switch is flipped and the process stops. So there is now an answer to the above concerns.

Should we be fighting against such a route? Or should we not concentrate instead on redefining the framework conditions for resolving outstanding problems, which we want to leave for the future. The first thing we could do is to have an open socio-political discourse worthy of the name. The introduction of a nuclear technology that is adapted to the principles of sustainability must demonstrate that it can effectively develop and deliver on the visions and promises that are being advocated today. This requires not only a fundamental change in the strategic and planning aspects of a new, safety-oriented technology, but also far-reaching adjustments to the back-end of the waste management system: specifically, the philosophy and technology of interim storage, waste treatment and recycling, safe transport or the treatment and long-term storage of radioactive waste that can in principle be reused. It is equally important to guarantee competent structures and independent management of the monitoring and control processes. This also includes the socio-political debate that is needed to create the will and understandable democratic decisions. The future will show whether this path is practicable in Western societies (such as Switzerland) or whether society will continue to be divided – as in the past – between supporters and opponents, and whether the nuclear policy mode of combat will continue to be detrimental to the future.

[1] See various press articles on the corresponding statement by Winfried Kretschmann between 2011 and 2014.

[2] Prasser, Horst-Michael, 2021. A short tour of the zoo of reactor types. Denkströme 21. https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/391147/denkstroeme-heft21_99-116_prasser.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y