Stockholm-Sana
The Swedish government today approved the construction of a storage facility to keep the country's spent nuclear fuel in a safe place for the next 100,000 years.
“This facility is the culmination of forty years of research and the waste will be safe for 100,000 years, and this is the solution to storing spent nuclear fuel indefinitely, and in this way we will ensure that we can use our nuclear energy in the Transformation framework to become the first developed country free of fossil fuels around the world.”
The disposal of nuclear waste has been a major concern since the world's first nuclear power plants became operational in the 1950s and 1960s. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that there are approximately 370,000 tons of spent, highly radioactive nuclear fuel stored in temporary facilities around the world.
Sweden's nuclear power plants have produced about 8,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, including spent fuel, since they began operating in the 1970s.
