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.

Today was combustible garbage day in my neighborhood. On Tuesdays and Fridays, residents place all their garbage deemed ‘burnable’ out on the curb. At promptly 8 a.m., it is taken away and, presumably, burned.

Burn after reading? Trash day instructions in Japan.

I had a lot of questions about what was considered combustible and the sign on the light post advertising the pick-up days wasn’t very helpful. My wife and I brought our 11-month-old son here. Were diapers considered ‘burnable’? I knocked on the Webers’ door to ask. Terry and Sherry Weber live next door. They’ve been working as teachers in Tokyo for 27 years. They told me that up until recently, plastic products were not considered burnable items, but all of that changed this year, and now it’s apparently fine to deposit plastic items like diapers on the curb on combustible garbage day. Either way, they told me, if the sanitation officials see that I’ve tried to sneak in some non-combustibles on the incorrect day, they’d leave it on the curb with a note, scolding me for screwing it all up.

I put a bag of diapers and another bag of what I thought were burnable items on the curb, nervous that I’d be the laughing stock of my new neighborhood. An hour later, the garbage truck arrived, two men got out, inspected my garbage, and dumped all of it into the back of their truck.

The dreaded Tokyo city sanitation department gives me a passing grade on my burnable/non-burnable garbage sorting skills.

Whew. Now I’ve got to prepare for Thursday, which is recyclables day. I’m supposed to separate all of my recyclables into paper, cardboard, plastic, and cans, and bundle each of them with string. Wish me luck.

Elsewhere on the waste disposal front:

I usually don’t get excited about toilets. But the toilet in my apartment here in Tokyo has inspired me to great heights.

It doesn't look exciting. But look more closely...

The toilet gives the user two types of flushes: the ‘big’ flush, or the ‘small’ flush, so that you can control how much water you’ll need, thereby conserving this precious resource.

Parched water districts of California: Please start importing these for your customers!

But that’s not what got me excited. What I was really impressed by was when you flush the toilet, water is pumped into the tank at the back of the toilet via a faucet. It runs into a basin on top of the tank where you can wash your hands with the water before it enters the toilet for the next flush. Genius. Pure genius. Why don’t we see more of these in California, where water is an even more precious resource than it is here?

Editor’s Note: Dual-flush toilets are now available in California. But the piggy-back sink–that’s a new one for me. –CM