Humans in a million years digging up thinking they are all tombs 😂

"In some cases leeching toxins into the environment" There is no leaking anymore - the content of these containers are encapsulated in concrete and glass nowadays. Also there is no fluid inside, those pellets are solid material - it can only "leak" if water get into the containers - which is why you shouldn't throw them in an old abandoned salt mine... There is also the possibility to recycle and reuse nuclear waste products which leads to much faster decay.

There is an unbelievably huge amount of radioactive material in the ground naturally, this really is a very safe and logical solution and as close to no risk as is possible with the very most efficiency of cost at the same time in balance.

Bure is not only "a proposed site for nuclear waste" but also a laboratory that studies nuclear waste storage for decades.

Every time I see anything regarding "extremely dangerous nuclear waste", I just can't believe that hardly anyone even tries to address the elephant in the room. Which is also about radioactivity, but... from coal plants. So much fuss about the nuclear waste, while it is just a small fraction of a waste generated by coal powerplants. And the coal waste is just stored in the open air as the ash - exposed to sunlight, rainwater, air, even though this ash is radioactive as well, and amounts of radioactivity are way higher than from nuclear powerplants, since uranium is very, very effective and actually very small amount of it is used. Just imagine - 1 gram of uranium replaces 3 metric tons of coal! Three million times less source material, and remember that coal is still the dominating source of electricity in the World! Just one quote from official documents: Studies show that ash from coal power plants contains significant quantities of arsenic, lead, thallium, mercury, uranium and thorium. To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant. We need to know, that used rods are not simply thrown away as a nuclear waste - they still hold a lot of energy and are reprocessed/recycled into new rods. It is the remaining material that can't be easily used, that is stored as nuclear waste. Also, a lot of medical equipment that has been used with radiology or radiotherapy. Generally, most of the fuss about nuclear waste comes from anti-atom maniacs, who try to convince us that this is a much more serious issue than it really is.

Fins r once again showing the world how things should be done by not being afraid to take the lead!👍 Its truly remarkable what such a small nation can achieve and surpass even "giants" and world leaders a.k.a. nowadays "empires". Finland got my respect - pragmatic and commons sense approach without any unnecessary BS will get u there. I can only wish 5 mil nation like Slovakia will get there one day with its mentality which relies so much on diversifying almost each and every square meter of its land and people. Once again great report DW, thank u very much!👏

I think the reason Finland is way ahead of most nations in choosing the site for their nuclear waste disposal has a lot more to do with their unique geology than their unique mentality. It's a lot easier to find a suitable place to bury your nuclear waste when your entire country sits inside the East European Craton (a craton being an incredibly old and stable portion of Earth's crust, usually flattened by ages of erosion), and probably in the oldest and most stable part of it. Things get a little less simple when you introduce younger rocks, volcanism and those pesky active fault lines onto the table.

Over 90% of used fuel is still recoverable as material to make new uranium fuel rods, and the technology exists & is used by several nations on a large scale. This greatly reduces the volume & also the need for more uranium mines. I wonder why this was not discussed in the video.

The containment doesn't have to last up to a million years. Radioactivity decays more or less logarithmically, meaning very fast in the beginning and eventually slower. This means that after 1000-10000 years spent fuel is somewhat safe to handle. The rule of thumb in radioactivity is that the shorter time the stuff remains radioactive the more dangerous it is, and vice versa. Bismuth is radioactive practically infinitely long time, but therefore is absolutely no danger at all, while iodine released from nuclear accident vanishes in about month or so but is therefore highly dangerous.

Thanks so much for this channel, just about to study my masters in 'energy and Sustainability development' and really kicks in my passion for this field ❤

I wish the rest of the world will be more like finland!

As a foreigner working construction job in Finland i can tell you Finnish job is top notch quality that nuclear waste is safe for thousands of years if not millions.

Rather than store nuclear “waste”, trying to preserve it intact for eons, we need to consume & transform it into a non-hazardous state / isotopes. Others more qualified can surely describe how this would work. “Reprocessing”, generally.

Valuable video on this topic, though I agree with the critique about scale. I'd love a follow up on the disposal options including vitrification and à comparison with waste from fusion.

What is that banger of Techno you put on the beginning of the video that runs until 0:01-0:44 ? I need that in my life. 😂

"Huge if true" did a similar piece recently. The video looked into what the Japanese are doing with their spent fuel. You should check it out! I think it might be a good approach too

i was expecting nothing but the best from my fellow metalheads. good job guys. While everyone is screaming and turning coal power plants back on you have solved the problem. Good job Finland

I have been to the forsmark site in sweden has been dug for a long time. I got to go into the caves and see example but also one of the medium tunnels through a window. Basicly glass concrete square containers. As said the problem has been controversy around the copper cask. Some say a kind of brass could be better. The tunnels have been there for years. I think they approved the fuel waste recently or is soon going to do it.

A hell of a lot safer then just leaving it lying around on the surface.

Arizona was abandoned because locals objected to the facts that the salt bed (highly corrosive and soluble) turned out to have significant water passage (migration of leakage) and was more geologically active than originally thought. Plus salt is a desirable material, easily mined, and readily absorbed by plants, animals, and people. So it was pretty much the opposite of the Finnish site.

i know this is not exactly the topic of this video but finally DW Planet came close to understanding the scale of nuclear waste amounts and scope when they talked about the types. So here are some general criticism and specific about the video: First, it would have helped to see the complete distribution between low level, intermediate and high and not just lumping the first 2 together since anything low level is not a problem really since it decays quite fast (don't remember exactly). Second, there should be a general explanation on how well most of the spent fuel (high level waste) is stored since the vast majority is taken very seriously and safely. heck, transportation of high level waste is so safe that they are sealed in casks that a train can crash into them and only the train is damaged. Obviously every negligence or subpar treatment should be criticized and scrutinized but the point is it is entirely possible to keep the waste completely safe even if we still don't have a long term solution like in this video. Third, 250million metric tonnes of high level waste, assuming it was meant for the waste of the entire world combined (should have been clarified). which means from the 50s (or 60s ?) till today, all of the nuclear power plants combined, created "26 Eiffel towers" worth of waste by weight that by volume would be even less since Depleted uranium is about twice as dense as iron. and the volume of just the iron of the tower would occupy a volume of only 930 meters cubed, which is equivalent to a sphere with a radius of just six meters. So it could have really helped to add some estimate of how much waste is planned to be stored in this facility and for how long this will last given the current amount of generated waste and some future projections if more Nuclear Power Plants will be built.

Thanks for the video DW.

If spent fuel rods still emit enough heat to be of concern why can’t that heat be utilized for further electricity production?

Why does DW use provocative titles for their posts? They frequently suggest an opinion by virtue of the choice of words. Often negative sounding. “Radioactive Cave”. Could have been “A safe storage solution” for nuclear waste.

I really just want to roll a bunch of bouncy balls from the top to the bottom just to see how long they would take. But this was really cool

Just because you bury it doesn’t mean you’ve solved the problem

I live in Nevada, just a 75 to 90 minute drive from the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste deposal site and it is being used, albeit on a sparse basis. It’s been in development for almost 20 years.

can it be retreived for recycling in the future easily?

To be fair, I think the fins would protest too if they would want to put it in an old salt mine

@DW Planet A What's different from the Canadian undergroung storage? I guess this have something to do with techtonic plate?

It should definitely not be left unmarked, that's for certain. Crazy that they decided to build it where people live, though. There's such a vast amount of earth that sits unpopulated, and can be used for, well, stuff like this. But great stuff.

These nuclear waste isn't truly waste. There's a lot of untapped potential energy inside there. The 1000's year half life can be reduced to a few hundred if we thoroughly use them. Japan is already doing that. There are problems associated with this however. We can get weapons grade fuel doing that but as long as it's handled with care then I don't think this is a big issue.

I want to clarify something from France: a few sites had been chosen to test the project, but they chose to build it in Bure because that's where there is less people, so less annoying manifestants, not because it was the best site. This site also brings questions if it is a truly good one. There is more ground water than expected... Nothing is really working with the radioactive waste burying project in Bure.

What surprises me is the fact that there are other options for the waste that are not talked about or even mentioned. Burrying the "waste" as in used fuel from LWR's is just crazy to me. they are burrying litteral unused fuel. Maybe it had been more informative if they had talked about the fuel cycle. When working with a fully open cycle meaning using the fuel once and then considering it waste is what happends now. You could also be recycling the spend fuel (waste) to turn it into MOX fuel, this is considered a half-open fuel cycle. When working with a fully closed cycle like using fast neutron reactors the waste that comes out of the reactor doesn't have to be stored for 1 000 000 years but more in the order of 300 years. Geological disposal is certainly a good solution, it's just not the only one. luckly the facility will be closed for good in the next century, so by then commercial fast reactors will be available to reuse the fuel and power country's for century's to come.

Well, this is all just a drop in the bucket. Uranium 235 has a half-life of 704 million years. So it will take another long time for all the uranium to decay. But this is not the end of radioactivity, because most of the decay products are radioactive themselves. So if you continue to use nuclear power, you need many final storage sites.

Why are the containers made from copper a rather soft and conductive material likely to be needed for power cables in the future and not in stainless steel, far stronger and much less reactive material if water do indeed intrude ?

0:31 No Nuclear Fle is stored in an Yellow barrel like this.

6:40 does she think they drill those holes etc in the mountain without water cooling the drillhead? Ofc its gonna be wet in there for a while

What about new technologies that allow you to use nuclear waste in further energy production - making it alot less radioactive? We are talking about transition from 100s of thousand of years to few houndred years(~300). Hitachi is making this kind of reactors. Also Copenhagen based startup claims to have build small reactors to deal with nuclear waste, and also running on thorium.

Reuse it in reactors on fast neutrons.

Sealing them in copper is crazy

US Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, there has been a flurry of headlines this summer about a "nuclear coffin" leaking radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean. It is cracked concrete.

Thank you for doing a video on nuclear!

Todays nuclear waste is tomorrows fuel.

DW should be ASHAMED of the title of this video, a blatant exercise in clickbaiting. You can only call this the "most radioactive place" by using a seriously twisted definition. Who is talking about places like Lake Karachay, in central Russia, where the outside environment is actually lethal. The Finns are handling this stuff in a completely sensible way.

Am not against this idea. I believe this is the most plausible way to do it. What concerns me is building the site close to a coastline. While this solution is suppose to last several thousands of years. Rising water levels wont wait that long, we could see this place under water in next 200-250 or maybe after 500 years and we could witness water seeping through those concrete or am I missing something?

Only Finland has permanent storage. UK Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning.

can they just use somekind of rubber / plastic around the copper capsule.

They should mark the concrete barriers and entrance to the tunnels with hieroglyps to warn future humans of entering. Like a puking emoji or something. "We have lots of money" made me laugh. 🤣

“-437 meters underground”… sounds legit, i deduce from this that they’re actually 437 meters above ground

8:20 I find it weird it will be left unmonitored and unmarked.

CANDU reactors can burn waste as fuel would seem obvious to get as much use out it as you can

Been there core drilling Some of the first tunnels

There is technology to recycle spent fuel rods and reuse them back into reactor power plants. It is not a cheap process to recycle the rods as it has been done but governments need to get behind this process.

First time I've heard someone refer to 15 minutes as a quarter of an hour.

Digging a tube for each container might not be the best solution. As there are numerous containers, even a mountain will not be able to accumulate all. It's expensive too. Although it's a time consuming process.

I'm thinking about moving to Finland

2:36 Thanks for the video, nice to see. A small point of feedback: "The trip underground takes almost an quarter of an hour". Why not "The trip underground takes 15 minutes." In my opinion, sounds unnecessary daunting.

There will be a use for it at some time its not really waste its not usable for what they want it for

So all the energy from the nuclear plants in finland was spent digging and making this mine operational ? 😅 just wondering.

2:45 negative meters underground means she's actually 400something meters above sea level but yeah...

Fins and sweds i love them so happy people ! ❤

Yea, we really need to find a better solution for the high-level nuclear waste. The storage facility is great, but there is so much potential energy still in those fuel rods...

Hats off to Finish scientists and people.

No waste is ever leaving the powerplants until they can sell it. Hahaha

Finland should make this facility bigger, as big as any possible. Then they should take in radioactive waste from other countries, of course at a premium price point. If the place is 100% safe, then there are no downsides for Finland. But there's a load of money Finland could make and plenty of jobs for Finns for many years to come. I'm also confident that the Finns will *actually* store this stuff safely. Much more confident than I am in other nations trying to do the same. So this would be a win win scenario for everyone, including the planet.

Just spray coat the capsules with line-x they should stay protected from possible ground water and remain safer for longer

Nice, that is until ocean waters raise due to melting icecaps. Then all that water around the site will leach into the materials. yea, good job!

I would translate "onkalo" as "the cavity".

What a waste of resources to build those caves, for half the effort they could have built a bank of Radio Thermal Generators or District Heating fueled by the so called "waste". Nuclear Waste is waste in the same way as gasoline is a waste product of oil refinement, no matter what you think of it, it's high energy stuff just sitting there to be used, and I think we should use it. For everyone's information, those cooling pools aren't passive, they need active cooling because otherwise that "waste" would boil the water, that's how high energy it is, Olympic sized swimming pools just dumping heat into rivers and seas while you're paying for heating.

One silly joke but funny -if u squeeze both ars muscles very hard u will start speaking Finland 😂

''Quarter of an hour'' Now that's something!

I wonder why they don't coat the copper barrels in a thick water resistant material? Would act as an extra sealant and prevent the copper from corrosion

Why are the barrels made put of copper? Couldn't they be made out of some corrosion-resistant material (which would also likely be cheaper anyways)? Does anyone know?

Excellent report. In the U.S. the quest to come up with a deep geological repository for high level nuclear waste began in the 1950s. Little progress has been made since then after spending many billions of dollars on the effort. The creation of such a repository is still likely many decades away. Most likely the rapid effects of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) will overwhelm the disposal efforts. Here the final waste disposal efforts have always taken a back seat compared to the financial revenues that came from the sale of nuclear energy. It has always been assumed that future generations will be in a better position to deal with this issue.

maybe a dumb question but why cant we use spent nuclear rods as heaters?

4:54 This is not the best solution. A five year old can think enough to dig a hole and throw bad stuff in it. Toilets began that way 😂

Excellent 👍 Smart move .

Genius way to combat the earth core cooling caused by ground-warm extracting systems.

0:54: 🌍 Finland has built a deep underground storage facility called Onkalo to store nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years, solving the nuclear waste problem. 3:39: 🗑 Nuclear waste is categorized into low-level, intermediate, and high-level waste, with the latter being the most problematic due to its long-lasting radioactivity and potential for leakage. 8:06: 🏭 Finland's nuclear waste storage facility, Onkalo, is designed to protect against the escape of radionuclides through multiple layers of protection, including bentonite clay and 420 meters of rock. 10:54: 🌍 Different countries have different approaches to storing nuclear waste, with Sweden likely to be the next country to start construction. Recap by Tammy AI

How much energy is required to excavate those tunnels, vs how much energy is obtained from the fuel rods when they are used?

I hope we can move to fusion technology. I realize its difficult.

Ha! I watched a documentary about Onkalo 12 years ago.

Plate the copper canister in gold. Gold doesn’t rust. Also, why copper and not steel or something heavier?

The Nevada test site has been hiking used nuclear material for years. So why say this is the only one???

400+ meters down right next to the sea...imagine future societies being able to scan bedrock and finding a lot of valuable copper down there. :P

If water can get in it can get out and contaminate the water table.

Onkalo 😊

And 50 years from now they come up with an idea how to reuse the waste, and all this is an Gold Mine, this is also very radioactive approx 300 years and after that can be handed with gloves and mask

I'd like to believe that we can still use the fuel rods for other applications.

It's a waste to bury all of that easily recyclable nuclear waste, though I do understand the problems with nuclear weapons proliferation associated with waste recycling.

As a Finnish person I can tell you one thing: if a Finnish company says anything about any structure being safe (anything built after the 80s), they are exaggerating or they are flat out lying. Hopefully at least THIS ONE is an honest man, because otherwise, we are FUCKED! 😬😬😬

What if someone drills a borewell after hundreds of years without knowing the history of this place!? 🤔

In Czech Republic they are storing nuclear waste underground for couple of years: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Waste_Repository_Authority

I feel bad if a war was to happen and the enemy goes straight to that location

Why dont we use it to make energy

Such a kid engineer being so confident about his technology lasting 100 thousand years. So fun, such a simple mimd.

Hats off to Finish scientists and people.. Hats off to Finish scientists and people..

How come the Fins don't use Vitrified Lead Glass ?

Why no mention of the cost of this project?