Nuclear Power £67.5 Billion Clean-Up Bill!

The safe disposal/storage of radioactive waste depending on its intensity of radioactivity, should not be too much of a problem. The technology has been around for least forty years, if not more.

In the early 70s I collaborated on a paper explaining the principles of the encapsulation of toxic wastes. This paper arose from the then Government’s Act of Parliament called the Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act 1972.

Encapsulation simply means locking the toxic waste inside a material, for example, concrete or glass, these materials having a limited and controllable leaching rate depending on certain external factors.

The problem central to the whole business is what to do with the encapsulated material. One solution was to offer impoverished countries requiring to earn foreign currency the opportunity to take the waste for disposal into deep geologically stable land structures where remotely controlled monitoring devices would maintain scrutiny of their stability and security.

This method of disposal is just about as secure as anything that can be devised and with the added bonus that it is extremely cost effective. As for £67 billion – I do not know who dreamt that up!

There are some interesting new disposal proposals coming from the States that would be cheap to implement.

One idea is to put the low-level waste in a concrete container and bury it out to sea. At least there aren’t any residents to complain out there! 😀

Indeed and it would have cost a fraction of that if politicians hadn’t prevaricated and dithered for the past 40 years…

No argument from me on that point!

I had to read that figure twice! The bit that gets me is nobody seems to have the faintest idea of the final cost!

Indeed and it would have cost a fraction of that if politicians hadn’t prevaricated and dithered for the past 40 years…..