Ingrid Becker

The Forsmark nuclear power plant is one of three in Sweden where about half the nation's electricity comes from 10 reactors built on the coast.

Sweden gets a lot of press as the country that’s figured out not only how and where to dispose of its nuclear waste but – significantly — how to win community support.

Today, in the second installment of our radio series, we’ll hear the Swedes explain what it took to change public attitudes.  You can also take a visual tour here of some of the places I visited and people I met while tracking Sweden’s progress.

While the U.S. – and pretty much everywhere else in the world – is in a political meltdown over the topic, The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company or SKB, is making strides toward a deep geologic disposal site at Forsmark in Eastern Sweden. In this video, a company representative explains how the company plans to encapsulate the fuel in copper canisters before burying it.

And you can peek inside the central interim storage facility with this video that shows where the waste is currently stored in what looks like large swimming pools.

Ingrid Becker

Inger Nordholm at the site on the Baltic Sea where the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company hopes to open a geologic repository in 2025 -- if regulators grant them a license.

Forsmark is part of the 22,000-person community of Osthammar which has been deeply involved in the repository issue for at least 15 years. You can read more about its work on the community website.

While there are still plenty of critics and some unresolved questions about whether the company’s proposed disposal method can withstand the test of time, local residents so far are willing to trust that the waste can be managed safely.  And they’ve come to accept that the stable bedrock in their region could be one of the safest places to bury all of Sweden’s nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years.

Osthammar of course stands to benefit from the jobs and investment that would come along with a repository, but everyone I talked with in Sweden told me this willingness to step forward is much more than financial.

“We have a Swedish expression, when you hunt the fox, you have to deal with the bite, says Brita Freudenthal, a spokeswoman for SKB. “We have the nuclear power, we use the electricity and we created the spent fuel and this is our responsibility. Most Swedes are very much aware of that.”

Jacob Spangenberg, the Mayor of Osthammar, told me he doesn’t  believe burying the waste in his community will create a stigma or hurt tourism in this  picturesque area on the Baltic. Rather, he says, it will generate global interest “In how to solve this very difficult issue, that people in Japan, and California and Germany must solve in one way or another.”

Among the people I ran across in Scandinavia was Janet Kotra, a senior staffer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She  was there for a meeting of international nuclear communities and told me  the United States can learn a few things from Sweden, which admitted a long time ago that solving the nuclear waste dilemma is not just a technical issue.

With plans for a repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain on hold — perhaps permanently —  Kotra says the US government is already thinking differently when it comes to community engagement. Regulators and  government agencies need a commitment, she says “that the  process for making regulatory decisions is available and accessible to a broader public so there can be that social acceptability.” If not, Kotra adds, “We’ll find ourselves right  back where we are today and we’ll find ourselves once again looking for another alternative.”

Tune in to the companion radio series: Part 1: California’s nuclear waste profile. Part 2 (Tue): What we can learn from Sweden. Part 3 (Wed): The town that said: “Yes, in our back yard.”

See Monday’s blog post to see where California’s nuclear waste is located and to explore an interactive timeline of the history nuclear waster disposal.

The panel advising President Obama is recommending the United States “proceed expeditiously” to establish one or more consolidated “interim” sites for storing high-level nuclear waste. Expeditious isn’t a word often associated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s troubled waste siting program. And, commissioners didn’t say where they would suggest putting the spent fuel, but Yucca Mountain certainly wasn’t mentioned in the series of draft reports from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. What the commissioners did recommend is that a new organization –independent of the Department of Energy — be formed to develop a waste disposal program.  The idea didn’t set well with some House Republicans.

Meanwhile, the political wrangling over Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a permanent vault for nuclear waste is exposing the federal government to substantial future penalties for breaking promises that it would take care of the spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office details how agreements with at least two Western states — Colorado and Idaho — may be threatened by termination of the Yucca Mountain repository program, and could result in penalties of up to $27.4 million annually.

Against this backdrop, Climate Watch continues its overseas reporting trip to explore what another technologically savvy country, Sweden, is doing with it’s high level radioactive waste.

Don't look for a diving board. All of Sweden's high-level waste is temporarily kept in pools of water underground. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

I’m grateful that GPS is now standard equipment for many cars. Without it I might still be lost on the back roads of Sweden in my rented Volvo.

On this leg of the journey I’m checking out the central repository where Sweden is storing the waste from its ten commercial reactors temporarily, in water, until a permanent geologic repository is built. A company brochure (available only as a PDF download) describes the storage process at the facility known as Clab.

Clab is in an area just outside the historic coastal town of Oskarshamn, about 155 miles from Stockholm. Despite several road signs, I had a little trouble finding the place, partly because I kept backtracking. Somehow I could not quite believe that a two-lane country road surrounded by forests and small farms could really be leading to both a nuclear power plant and the place where all the country’s nuclear waste goes.

Spent fuel assemblies are housed in steel containers and submerged in water to shield the radioactive material. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

Once I do arrive, I’m greeted by Brita Freudenthal of the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, or SKB.

Before we enter the controlled facility we must slip on rubber shoe covers, a hardhat and protective jacket, and then strap on a monitor calibrated to set off an alarm should it detect any unusually high levels of radon.

Under Sweden’s unique system for temporarily storing high-level radioactive waste, a specially designed ship carries the spent-fuel assemblies from the coastal reactors to this central facility which is built underground deep in the bedrock. There the waste is submerged in huge pools to shield against radioactivity.

The spent fuel assemblies arrive in casks, which are placed under the water in open steel canisters designed to prevent spontaneous nuclear reactions.

Clab employee Peter Thursson swabs the floor as part of a routine radiation monitoring program at Sweden's interim storage facility for high-level waste.

SKB says it has never had an accident here but there’s no escaping the fact that this is dangerous stuff. As the tour continues we find ourselves peering directly into one of the crystalline pools and examining curious geometric patterns formed by the sharp lines from dozens of containers filled with  uranium dioxide pellets. Freudenthal drives home the point.

“We have here about 2,000 tons that you are looking (at), and you can stand here as long as you want to,” she tells me before quickly adding, “If we take one of these bundles out of the water I will give you 20 seconds to leave this room alive.”

Storing the high-level waste in water is not unique to Sweden, but this is the only country that collects it in one central facility owned and operated by a private company.  Clab employs 100 people and is designed to hold up to 8,000 tons of spent fuel, though its current license limits it to 5,000 tons. Swedish nuclear industry officials believe concentrating the fuel in a single facility is safer than storing it near the power plants or spreading it around to several sites as the U.S. and other countries with nuclear power do now.

Follow the yellow brick road? The Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in Sweden. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

This summer, Climate Watch will launch a three-part radio series on the nuclear waste dilemma. As part of the reporting for that series, The California Report’s senior producer, Ingrid Becker, traveled to Sweden to examine a program touted as a potential model for the world. This dispatch is the second part of her series preview.

The road to Äspö from Gothenburg, where I arrived from San Francisco, winds through a storybook landscape of small farms, lush forests and brick-red houses. Road signs warning of moose crossings pop up at regular intervals along the highways and back roads.

Traditional wooden houses like this one dot the landscape in Småland, the historical province where the Swedes have built a demonstration laboratory for storing spent nuclear fuel. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

And so it was a bit jarring to later find myself in a granite cavern, standing face-to-face with giant copper tubes, enormous machinery and a specially designed fuel transport vehicle quaintly named after one of the Viking gods.

The trip, 340 meters (1,115 feet) below ground to the demonstration tunnel takes a full minute in a noisy and slightly bumpy elevator. Before we enter the tunnel, I must strap on a transponder, a safety precaution in case of emergency. At this point I’m asking myself if I should be alarmed, but the attentive public relations officer assures me that since the facility opened in 1995, about 10,000 visitors a year have made this trek.

Down in the tunnel, it’s anything but scary.  While the lab is not quite an industrial Disneyland, there is an element of showmanship here. The company prides itself on openness and bright graphics detail the plans for storing the waste. Visitors are encouraged to touch the models and sample the salty groundwater flowing through the bedrock. During my visit we are joined by a clutch of students from a local university and researchers from the Swedish defense agency.

Tour guide Åsa Nielson encourages visitors to Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory to touch the bentonite clay that will help seal copper canisters with nuclear waste when they are stored underground. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

The waste won’t actually be stored in these tunnels.  This is what SKB calls a “dress rehearsal.”  SKB has selected a site further east at Forsmark in the community of Östhammar for the permanent repository. It will take several years for the government to review the 7,000-page application for the repository. Under best-case scenarios, construction could start in 2015. The first canisters wouldn’t actually be buried until 2025.

As with anything requiring this level of scrutiny, there are sure to be a lot more questions about whether the plan is really safe.   Before touring the lab, I met with the environmental organization dedicated to watching over the nuclear waste planning process.

Johan Swahn of the environmental watchdog group MKG, lifts a box containing some of the 7,000 pages in SKB’s application for a permanent spent fuel repository. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

MKG director Johan Swahn says six years ago when he began his watchdog role, the repository plan seemed more assured. Today, he has his doubts.

The Swedish nuclear waste company is adamant that its method will be safe, but Swahn says more concerns are being raised about whether the copper canisters could in fact corrode and leak. “Copper is not all immune in those environments,” he says. “The whole idea in Sweden that the industry itself is solely responsible for taking care of the waste (means that) there’s no other funding for research outside industry — and that has led to a situation where we may have fooled ourselves properly.”

As Ingrid Becker continues her research in Sweden, Climate Watch senior editor Craig Miller is touring the only functioning geologic repository for nuclear waste in the US. The two will combine their reporting for the upcoming series.

How Sweden is getting some to say, “Yes, in my backyard,” Part 1

The country that brought the world Alfred Nobel and his dynamite, Volvo cars and IKEA furniture is busy touting another invention.  The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, or SKB, has asked for government permission to build what could become one of the world’s first permanent geologic repositories for spent nuclear fuel.

SKB public relations officer Brita Freudenthal encourages visitors to touch models of the copper canisters at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory, where plans are being developed for permanent storage of nuclear waste. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

I’m in Sweden this month to learn just what this environmentally-conscious nation of nine million people can teach us about managing the radioactive refuse from commercial reactors. While the waste from California’s two nuclear power plants — Diablo Canyon and San Onofre – is piling up in temporary storage containers (with still more at the decommissioned Rancho Seco plant, near Lodi), Sweden is moving forward with a program 30 years in the making, to safely dispose of the spent uranium dioxide pellets that fuel its ten reactors

”I believe it has been a strength that industry has had a clear task to solve the (waste) problem,” says SKB’s Chief Executive Officer Claes Thegerström, in a recent interview for the company website. “When we began, we had right from the beginning a mix of experienced people from the industry. We had outgoing academics and, strong authorities, which allowed us – in contrast to the American way – to own the mission.”

This week I’m in Stockholm where we’ll hear more about the Swedish example during a two-day gathering of social scientists, legal scholars, and industry experts, as well as political and community leaders from Sweden and abroad.

One of my first stops on this Scandinavian tour was the underground laboratory where the Swedes are pioneering the so-called KBS-3 concept. The plan is to isolate the nuclear waste in copper canisters buffered by bentonite clay and then bury it 500 meters deep in crystalline bedrock, where it will remain for the next 100,000 years.

Last fall, a delegation from President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste also came to explore the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory that sits outside the scenic town of Oskarshamn on Sweden’s east coast. Now it was my turn.

Buses carry an estimated 10,000 visitors a year into the tunnels at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in Southern Sweden. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

Next post: “Hard Rock Cafe” — Ingrid goes underground to experience the Hard Rock Lab. Later this month she’ll tour the interim storage facility for all of Sweden’s high-level nuclear waste and visit the towns where more than 80% of the population said it would be okay to put a spent fuel repository in their backyard.