Nuclear Information Centre
Waste Management Opportunities (2022)
[NIC/NW/003]
****Nuclear Information Centre - updates.***
As of 28 September 2023 this exhibit is unavailable and pending decommissioning due to Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) withdrawing the Allerdale region from the GDF siting process citing unfavourable geology. There are now currently 3 remaining active Community Partnerships; Mid-Copeland, South Copeland and Theddlethorpe.
As of 25 January 2024 a new GDF working group (South Holderness) has formed so the Working Group/Community Partnership total is back up to four again meaning this exhibit may now be re-commissioned.
On 21 Feb 2024, East Riding Council voted 54 to 1 to withdraw South Holderness from the GDF siting process.
There are now currently 3 remaining active Community Partnerships; Mid-Copeland, South Copeland and Theddlethorpe.
Nic Pehkonen, Waste Management Opportunities, 2022 [4 x plastic cat litter trays, each one filled with bentonite cat litter and containing a 1:1500 scale diecast model Vanguard Class Trident nuclear submarine].
A UK, Vanguard class Trident nuclear submarine (pictured here somewhere in the Bentonite Sea, shortly before submerging: protected by the depths, out of sight and out of mind).
Nuclear Waste Services, The Multi-Barrier Approach, GDF - The Science Files, Version 2 - 1/2022, page 7.
To date, four Community Partnerships have formed through the UK government’s latest, ongoing attempt to find a site in which to build a geological disposal facility (GDF) for the permanent containment of the UK’s higher activity radioactive waste.
Three of these partnerships (South Copeland, Mid Copeland and Allerdale) are situated in West Cumbria, a region with nuclear connections extending back to the 1940s and home to Sellafield where around 70% of the UK’s total radioactive waste inventory currently resides. The fourth community partnership, (Theddlethorpe), is something of an outlier in this respect, situated close to the Lincolnshire coast.
One of the proposed engineered barrier solutions to slow the corrosion rate of the waste packages deposited within a GDF is to surround them with bentonite clay, which is also commonly used as cat litter due to its excellent moisture absorbing properties. Each package of vitrified high-level waste will be surrounded by a bentonite buffer/backfill with hundreds of metres of natural rock forming the final barrier between the waste and the outside world.
Bentonite derives from volcanic ash and is usually formed through the devitrification of volcanic glass as it dissolves in water over millions of years which, in some ways could be seen as almost the reverse process of vitrification and optimum dry conditions required for the packaging and future storage of high activity radioactive waste.
In this exhibit, each litter tray represents both a current GDF Community Partnership and a cross-section of a bentonite surrounded radioactive waste package. The waste packages themselves are presented as model Vanguard class nuclear submarines, four of which comprise the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent, perhaps raising further questions about waste within a broader nuclear context. (Note: Should further communities join, or existing ones leave the GDF siting process, this exhibit would have to be rethought or decommissioned entirely due to the resulting numerical mismatch).
Whilst water is a critical component of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, it becomes a singularly undesirable material in underground disposal of radioactive waste due to its potential to corrode waste packages over time and act as a conduit through which hazardous radionuclides could travel upwards towards the surface.
Continuing with themes of waste and water, the Vanguard class submarines themselves will become another nuclear waste management opportunity once their successor Dreadnought Class replacements have been completed which is scheduled to be some time in the 2030s. The four Vanguard boats will then join the UK’s growing stockpile of 20 existing decommissioned and defueled nuclear submarines which are all awaiting dismantlement and currently languishing in watery graveyards at Devonport and Rosyth.
Information last updated: Tue 22 Oct 2024
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