Finland weighs underground nuclear waste disposal
Date: 17-May-01
Country: FINLAND
Author: Heli Suominen
The debate will test the cohesion of the coalition government since most European countries are now moving away from nuclear power with public opinion increasingly opposed to use of atomic energy and worried about nuclear waste disposal.
The government decided in December to give its support in principle to plans by waste group Posiva, a unit of power groups Teollisuuden Voima and Fortum, to build an underground disposal facility at Olkiluoto in western Finland.
Environmental group Greenpeace said any parliamentary decision should wait for further research, and argued that the waste tanks could be kept under better supervision in temporary storage units.
Greenpeace activists set up 500 crosses on the lawn in front of Parliament House to protest against the building of the final waste dump. Each cross represented 10 generations that would inherit the problem, the organisation said.
If parliament endorses the proposal, Posiva plans to begin excavating in 2003-2004 and to start building the final nuclear waste disposal plant in 2010, officials said.
The country's two nuclear plants at Olkiluoto and Loviisa annually produce 70 tonnes of nuclear waste, which is temporarily stored on the plant grounds. The government says that final storage below ground would be safer than long-term temporary storage.
Last November TVO filed an application for a permit to build a new nuclear reactor, which would be the country's fifth and would put this Nordic nation at odds with a broad international trend away from nuclear power.
If parliament passes the government proposal, Finland will be the first country in the world to decide to go ahead with deep underground disposal of nuclear waste, though several others are considering it.
According to the International Energy Agency, Korea, Japan and Finland are the only members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) considering building new nuclear power stations.
The dangers of nuclear waste are one of the arguments environmental organisations present against a new nuclear plant. Finland last shipped nuclear waste to Russia in 1996 after passing a law requiring it to be disposed of domestically.
The nuclear power issues threatens to upset cooperation in the government as the Greens, a junior partner in the five-party coalition, have vowed to pull out if the government and parliament allow industry's plans for a new reactor to go ahead.