A poetic

consideration

of Hell

David Harvie

 

Recently I watched a film about a high-level nuclear waste repository. The intriguing, poetic visuals and quiet, spare narration were accompanied by what came across as the most extraordinarily candid, thought-provoking interviews with senior engineers, administrators and policy-makers – men and women who gave no hint of hovering spin-doctors, censorious political superiors or an overbearing compliance with secrecy. They openly offered some considered and unexpected opinions. You would therefore be correct to surmise that this film was not focussed on the nuclear industry in this country.
     'Into Eternity' by the Danish director Michael Madsen, was transmitted in April by Channel 4 under the title 'Nuclear Eternity'. It examined the construction and reasoning behind Onkalo, a most ambitious deep-level repository being excavated on the Finnish island of Olkiluoto, 185 miles north-west of Helsinki and a few miles from the site where there are two existing reactors and a third currently under construction; this third reactor is beset by problems of poor workmanship, massive time delays and is significantly over-budget.
     The repository concept was initiated in the 1970s and excavation begun in 2004; the storage area itself, 1,400 feet deep at the end of three miles of spiralling tunnels, will begin construction about 2015 and be ready to receive spent fuel canisters five years later, by which time other similar facilities will have to be at the planning stage. In 100 years, the repository will be full and the entire excavation will be back-filled and sealed to all human contact for all time; the concept demands that no human monitoring or management will take place.
     There is a long-running international debate on high-level nuclear waste disposal; deep underground (and left undisturbed for all time), or on the surface (and capable of being monitored and of being further treated as technologies improve). Radiation accidents observe no national territories or boundaries; it would surely be most prudent to seek international conformity on action.
     In the meantime, Finland has a legal requirement for deep-level storage secure from any human intervention or contact for at least 100,000 years; not only that, but all archives and records of the site, with detailed warnings of the potential threat to life, must be made available for future generations. (Other countries, including the USA, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the UK are considering theoretical compliance periods of one million years for such wastes).
     The profound philosophical issues raised by such requirements are daunting. We can have no certainty of what kind of society will exist in 100 years, far less 100,000. In what ways could the earth's surface and the deep geology be changed, by war, ice-age or other catastrophe? If a society exists, will it be literate? Will it understand any of our known languages? Could it access computer files (even if, in some way, they could be continuously 'updated')?

 

     Scientists at Onkalo have even considered the implications of devising hieroglyphic monoliths to convey pictorial narratives to generations who may not have language as we understand it. To hear and see on film psychologists, physicists and regulators struggle with such questions, and be willing to express uncertainty and doubt, is both shocking and thought-provoking. One Swedish official, after a long silence, concluded in frustration, but with a chilling hint of certainty, 'The answer is that nobody knows anything at all'.      The film's slow tracking shots through Onkalo's tunnels, accompanied by Madsen's quiet narrative, delivered as if addressing future generations, intensify the sober potency of this great dilemma for humanity. It is worth remembering that today's archaeologists are routinely unable to understand with any certainty many benign structural remains that are only a few thousand years old. The prospect of explaining complex structures, and their lethal contents, to societies hundreds of generations into the future seems unattainable.
     Yet, if we accept that nuclear waste requires a solution, Onkalo does seem relatively farsighted; it is the only practical deep-level repository remotely nearing completion. In the USA, a recommendation to use deep-level disposal was made in 1957, and a site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was investigated over a decade from 1978. The first deposits at Yucca Mountain were to have been made in 1998, but there have been continuing delays, problems and political disputes, and the project is still at least a decade from being opened.      The project was finally condemned in April this year 'for policy reasons' when its budget was terminated. At a cost of untold billions of dollars, the USA now has no prospect of advanced storage of 100 million gallons of high-level radioactive liquids and 2,500 metric tons of high-level spent fuel, which is currently kept at over 120 inadequate and temporary sites all over the country.
     The UK has engaged ineffectually with this issue for years and also essentially achieved nothing. As time-scales have become extended, there is growing concern in scientific circles as to the wisdom of deep geological storage. The Scottish Government does not endorse the UK government thinking on deep-level disposal, but would support 'near-surface, near-site' storage and monitoring. At present, there is no centralised UK storage facility, no final decision on preferred geology, no experimental research laboratory, no decision on dose constraint, compliance period or likely start of repository operation.
     Over decades of experiencing hardly any ladders, but quite a few snakes, the issue has continually returned to square one in the face of scientific and public pressure and the inconvenient recurrence of elections. In a more recent manifestation of 'stakeholder involvement', local authorities have been 'invited' to offer themselves as hosts to such a deep disposal project. So far three have done so – all close to the existing Sellafield nuclear plant, which has numerous 'interim' high-level waste storage areas at ground level, and a separate overflowing site at Drigg, a few miles away, for low-level waste. A UK decision in principle on deep disposal is not likely before 2025.
     There is an increasing number of Achilles heels for the nuclear industry. The 'real cost' is undoubtedly one (which has been the object of cover-up and obfuscation ever since the opening of Calder Hall in 1956 for the production of nuclear weapons when, out of the political blue, we were suddenly promised 'electricity too cheap to meter'); but disposal of high-level radioactive wastes is probably the most damning...and expensive.

'Into Eternity' is available on DVD

David Harvie was a film editor in a past life, and now writes in a variety
of guises