January 23, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 13, 1429

LONDON: Nuclear power’s credentials as a carbon-free energy source have helped to calm fears about its safety, but scientists have yet to solve the problem of the hundreds of thousands of years of toxic waste it generates.

Most countries’ nuclear waste is stored in steel and concrete containers kept in indoor cold water ponds over ground or ventilated shafts.

Ideally, scientists say, it should be placed in deep, underground repositories.

That technology is not yet proven. But the British government, which earlier this month backed a new generation of nuclear power plants, said it believed deep geological waste reserves would be viable and some scientists agree.

“I think there’s sufficient evidence that internationally all the technology is there and the safety analysis has been done many times over,” said Neil Chapman of the School of Underground Waste Management.

“The problem is that those people who have been opposed to nuclear have persistently said there isn’t a solution to waste disposal because there are no purpose-built underground facilities in the world to deal with this,” he added.

So far, some 270,000 tonnes of spent fuel are in storage in cold water facilities around the world and 10,000 to 12,000 tonnes are added each year, according to the International Energy Agency, energy adviser to industrialised nations.

To try to overcome the obvious difficulty of local opposition, the British government has asked communities to volunteer to host a deep underground repository.

The bulk of Britain’s nuclear waste is stored at Sellafield, in the north of England, and some analysts regard it as the only potential volunteer because it is already home to so much waste.

The public consultation on waste and decommissioning will take place between February and March 2008 and will be followed by an application for volunteers.

“The volunteerism angle is pretty much unprecedented... it’s an unusual way of going about things,” said Julian Boswall, planning partner at the UK nuclear energy group at law firm Eversheds.

“The real battle is going to be around...exactly where the site is going to be depending on how many communities are prepared to come forward.”

In theory, there are many suitable sites.

“There’s lots of places you could go. This exercise has been done several times before, the general findings done over the last 20 years showed a quarter to a third of the UK was geologically suitable,” Chapman said.

But even when the problem of location is solved, another issue is funding.

The British government has repeatedly said it will not fund nuclear power, but analysts have said the private sector would not be able to afford the huge costs of waste disposal on top of the at least $3.90 billion required to build a nuclear plant.

For many, practicalities are a much lower consideration than the ethical dilemma of leaving a legacy for generations to come.

“That stuff doesn’t go away and will last for thousands if not millions of years and that is imposing a burden on future generations,” said Andrew Blowers, a former member of the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), which advised the British government.

While nuclear proponents say atomic power generation does not produce any of the emissions blamed for global-warming, it is disputed by environmentalists who point to the carbon-intensive uranium extraction and refining process.

They also say the amount of carbon emissions nuclear generation would prevent is insignificant.—Reuters