Recruiter Awards – Best Engineering Recruitment Agency 2023
The United Kingdom has been a pioneer of nuclear technologies for more than 60 years. During the Cold War arms race, Britain’s focus was producing material for a nuclear deterrent. As our priorities shifted, we turned these facilities into nuclear power stations, generating electricity for homes and businesses. Thanks to generations of brilliant scientists and engineers, nuclear technologies have supported national defence and generated electricity and today, we remain a world-leading nuclear enterprise.
But now we face the challenge of cleaning up the legacy of our early nuclear operations; delivering innovative solutions for managing radioactive waste that meets today’s safety standards. The UK currently has 17 nuclear sites dotted around the country. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), is tasked with overcoming the challenges of nuclear clean-up and decommissioning, leaving these 17 sites ready for their next use.
We generate radioactive waste from nuclear power generation, defence, medicine, and wide sections of Industry. At the moment, this waste is stored above ground at over 30 sites around the UK.
Although these surface stores can be safe for many decades, they require continuous protection to keep them secure and in good condition. Current plans indicate it will take more than 100 years to complete the NDA’s core mission of nuclear clean-up and waste management of our 17 nuclear sites.
Geological disposal is the safest and most secure way to manage higher activity waste for the long term to ensure that the responsibility of continually protecting this waste is not passed on to future generations. Higher-activity waste will be put hundreds of metres deep underground and having one in the UK will create jobs and guaranteed investment for the host community.
Geological Disposal involves isolating radioactive waste deep inside a suitable rock mass, ensuring that no radioactivity ever reaches the surface environment. A GDF will be a highly engineered structure consisting of multiple barriers and will provide protection over hundreds of thousands of years.
Geological disposal involves isolating radioactive waste in sealed vaults and tunnels between 200m and 1000m below the earth’s surface. This will contain the radioactive waste while it decays naturally and will prevent it from ever reaching the surface in levels that could cause harm. Waste will be packaged in secure engineered containers made from metal or concrete and then placed in a stable rock formation hundreds of meters below the earth’s surface surrounded by clay or cement.
Apart from the ongoing maintenance the current surface storage facilities need, there is also the question of their vulnerability to acts of terrorism or war as well as climate change. A GDF is deemed to be the safest method of storing radioactive waste, although other methods such as disposal at sea, disposal in ice sheets and even disposal in space have been looked at.
And there is the million-dollar question. The Government is currently looking for a suitable site to implement geological disposal and will need a willing community in order for it to proceed. The process of finding a site could take 15-20 years and it would need a positive test of public support and the relevant permissions from independent regulators. The chosen community will receive government investment of up to £1million per year and there will be hundreds of well-paid jobs for every year over a century which could create further opportunities for the local supply chain.
