Ahen the elevator door, which resembles a room in a submarine, closes, Mathieu Saint-Louis calls out: “We are going to the deepest place in France.” Mathieu Saint-Louis and his colleague Jacques Delay of the French National Agency for Radioactive Disposal Wastes (ANDRA) prepare a group of international reporters for what awaits them underground.
After five minutes, the elevator descends to a depth of 500 meters – in the middle of the clay rock that serves as a protective capsule for the underground laboratory. Here scientists find out how to store radioactive waste permanently and safely. The actual repository for the permanent storage of radioactive waste is to be built a few kilometers away – the large-scale project is to begin in four years at the latest.
Waste sorted according to the degree of residual radiation
A deep geological repository for the disposal of spent fuel elements is not yet in operation anywhere in the world. The first facility in south-west Finland is set to be the first next year. The French, who have the largest share of nuclear power in the world, are not quite as fast – but at least significantly faster than Germany, where the process of searching for a repository has repeatedly stalled.
France has found the right place near the village of Bure, 220 kilometers east of Paris. This repository is intended to receive all the waste that has so far accumulated in French reactors. The search for suitable locations began thirty years ago. Geologists and ANDRA have narrowed the list of possible locations for the underground laboratory to four districts. In 1997, the local authorities concerned were asked to vote on this issue. A year later the choice of a site near Bure was confirmed.
Here is drilling.
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Image: Tomáš Grečko
Construction of the test laboratory began twenty years ago. Tunnels and shafts are built on a scale of 1:1. Nevertheless, the ANDRA employees have to assure again and again that there is no radioactive waste on the site and that they “are just scientists doing experiments”. Local anti-nuclear activists don’t believe them. They say the government is trying the “salami method” – first a lab, and then once it’s built it would be a shame not to use it as a warehouse.
Earthquakes not the biggest problem
There is a great temptation to connect the laboratory that has already been excavated to the planned repository a few kilometers away. According to a six-year-old estimate, the cost of the repository is estimated at 26 billion euros. Prices have continued to rise since then and every kilometer of tunnel saved would be of enormous value.
Currently, the tunnel network is over a kilometer long, and scientists are drilling further as needed. They test various parameters of corridors and shafts – for example, they change their diameter or the materials and construction of the reinforcements. In some places the tunnels are only five, in others ten meters wide. In some places the concrete casing is eight inches thick, in others half a meter.
Activist Joël Domenjoud
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Image: Tomáš Grečko
Hundreds of test bores were made in all directions from the tunnels. Around 10,000 different sensors and measuring instruments are housed in it to determine which combination is ideal and how the rock behaves around them. They monitor the temperature, humidity and microscopic movements of the rock. Using the data collected over several years, they try to model the development for thousands of years.
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