JTO: The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up

[Clark Kent]

The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up
By - 02-03-2010 04:11 PM
Originally Posted at: The Japan Times Online
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The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day.
The security surrounding its departure on Jan. 21 indicates that something out of the ordinary is aboard. The Pacific Sandpiper and several sister ships make no port calls on their voyages between Europe and Japan because they carry potentially lethal nuclear material.

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The Japan Times Online

 

[K-man]

In the Pacific Sandpiper's hold on this journey to Japan via the Panama Canal is only one item of cargo — a giant cylinder weighing more than 100 tons. Inside are 28 containers, each made of stainless steel nearly one-third of a meter thick. They are packed with 14 tons of highly radioactive waste that has been turned into solid glass form to make it safer and easier to handle.
It is the first of a series of such shipments planned for next few years to Japan from Britain's Sellafield nuclear storage and reprocessing complex. Three years ago, a dozen similar shipments from France to Japan were successfully completed. Used fuel from nuclear power reactors that generate about one-third of Japan's electricity has been shipped to Europe for reprocessing since 1969, while vitrified waste has been sent back to Japan by sea since 1995.

High-level radioactive waste is accumulating at a rate of about 12,000
But either way, the time for permanent storage of the most toxic waste deep underground in geologically stable rock, salt or clay in countries that have been generating electricity from nuclear power for decades is fast approaching.

Back in the early 70s I shared a flat with a guy who eventually became the environmental officer for Rio Tinto. While in that position he wrote a book suggesting the vitrification of nuclear waste followed by its internment deep underground in stable geological regions. Interesting that his publication finally seems to have borne fruit.