There are temporary facilities for storing radioactive waste around the world.
The waste is buried in 1,400 feet of metal.
The site is close to the Baltic Sea. We saw what we saw.
Nuclear waste has been produced with no good place to put it.
It's usually in temporary facilities. There is a need for a permanent solution according to experts.
The world's first forever home for radioactive waste is on the verge of being created by Finland.
The site was visited by an Insider. The costs of the trip were paid for by Insider.
I entered a facility that will soon be filled with nuclear waste.
There are 31 miles of tunnels under the ground at Onkalo.
The idea is to put the waste far away from people.
Humans have never before had to plan for a long time.
The result is the Onkalo plant, the product of almost 20 years of work that will be in operation for another 100 years and will cost an estimated 3.5 billion euro.
There is something at the site.
Nuclear waste is encased in canisters that are made of iron and copper.
There are 3 miles of tunnels that go down to 1,300 feet.
The elevator shaft is about 1,500 feet long.
There is a hive of sub-tunnels.
The facility wants to hold about 3,250 of these huge canisters. The spent nuclear fuel will be stored in total.
The tunnels are expected to be full in about 100 to 120 years according to Posiva.
The access tunnels are visible from above.
We went down in a van.
The trip took less than an hour.
There was only one vehicle in the tunnel. I knew I hadn't been this deep underground before.
There are signs at intervals that remind us how far we have to go.
We have a lot of equipment to keep us safe.
I had to wear a flashlight and heavy protective boots all the time.
Security officers were able to know how many people were in the tunnels with my helmet's tracking device.
This is the lowest point. The start of the area where the nuclear waste will be held is marked by heavy metal doors.
The site will be permanently closed after the century-long storage operations are over.
Thousands of feet of rock like this were around me.
The rock is one of the reasons the site is here.
"You want an area of rock that isn't going to change for millions of years, that's what you want," said Lewis.
There are ways to make nuclear waste less dangerous. He didn't play a part in the making of Onkalo.
The storage facility needs to be sure that it won't be damaged by an earthquake.
You need rock that is very hard or very soft.
The final resting place for nuclear fuel roads will be the rocky chamber.
Some 250 to 500 half-inch-long pellets of uranium are refined and treated with a process that turns the fuel into a type of ceramic.
A single fuel assembly is made using dozens of rods. Depending on which reactor they are going to, each assembly contains between 700 and 1200 lbs of nuclear material.
The heat from the reactor core will be turned into electricity. I'm in a reactor with a wall of rods.
Before the fuel is put in the reactor, it is mildly radioactive. It is the most radioactive after it is taken out of the reactor.
It could be lethal if a human were exposed to the raw fuel at that time. The fuel is packaged and handled in a way that doesn't expose anyone.
Highly radioactive rods come out of the hole. They've been in the cooling ponds for 40 years.
The water in the pools cools the fuel and protects it from the radiation.
The pools are close to the reactor. The waste from the plant is here.
Nuclear waste is taken out into vats above ground. Both techniques need to be maintained.
Posiva has a plan for the future. The spent rods will be put in metal tubes.
The fuel needs to be kept away from people even though it has lost most of its radioactivity.
The gray tube is made of cast iron and copper.
The iron and copper are used to protect the rods from unforeseen forces.
The main enemy of long-term storage is water, so it must be kept away from the spent fuel for as long as possible.
The water would take a long time to eat through the canisters.
The next defense is a type of clay called bentonite.
The canister is wrapped in a substance.
A tight seal around the canister is created when the material swells up in contact with water.
He said it was like self- healing.
The waste canister will enter an elevator and be taken down to permanent storage.
The elevator shaft has two ends.
It can be buried in a hive of side tunnels after the canister arrives, a process that is almost entirely automated.
How it works is explained in this video.
This animation shows an automated digging machine making a shaft for each canister.
There is a prototype hole-drilling machine in this picture.
The canister is protected from water with the help of another machine.
This is a deposition tunnel in a movie. There will be canisters buried.
The first waste will be buried in one of the five tunnels that have been built so far.
A third machine is used to pick up a canister from a storage room.
In case a human needs to get close, the machine carried each canister in a temporary radiation shield.
It is deposited in the prepared hole lined with bentonite.
The prototype of the canister- moving machine is shown here.
The shaft is closed.
The holes will be filled with a layer of bentonite to complete the seal.
As each hole is filled, another machine fills the whole thing.
A concrete plug will be used to seal the tunnel further.
The end of the tunnel was used to test the process.
Humans will have to work on the site until it closes.
The site is being run by Posiva until it is filled with refuse from the nuclear plants.
Each bunch of waste will be sealed away quickly. The tunnel complex needs to be accessed to oversee the process and to blast out new tunnels.
Workers can take a break in the cafeteria and bathroom at the cave complex.
The workers spend a lot of time underground. Mustonen denied that it was difficult.
The parking hall is like a normal parking hall in the city.
He said that it is more frustrating to go down in the tunnels on a warm summer's day than it is on a cold winter's day.
The cafeteria is fully stocked. Pea soup is on the menu on Thursdays.
Workers don't have parties there yet.
Mustonen was asked if there were any parties in the tunnel.
I don't think so. He replied that it was not yet.
He stated that there have been events. He said the miner's tradition is to have a small ceremony at the end of a tunnel.
A concert was held at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Mika was able to take advantage of the acoustics of the room on the occasion.
Engineers are pretty sure they've thought about every possible option.
People probably don't know how much work has gone into the future planning of the site.
Have they thought of this? he asked.
He said that they have.
When asked if he was worried that a volcano or earthquake would bring the waste back to the surface, Mustonen simply said: "We have seen that happening in movies."
He said something like that does not happen.
The next big geological event is an ice age that will last 50,000 years. Flooding the ground with more water could cause earthquakes.
The geologists' work shows that the site won't be much affected. Posiva's calculations show that the risk to humans and the environment will be very small if the particles are released into the environment.
What is Onkalo's future-proofing against? Posiva says not with radioactive cats or nukes.
Scientists have been thinking about how to store nuclear waste in the future.
Scientists proposed a range of wacky ideas from genetically engineered cats that changed colors when exposed to radiation to elaborate nuclear-based sects to scare future humans away, as can be seen in the video below.
Janne Mokka was the CEO of Posiva.
He said that Posiva is responsible for the site until it closes for good.
He said that they have thought about it.
It is difficult for Mokka to believe that humans would misplace every record of the repository.
He said that by the time this would happen, the radioactivity would have been reduced.
He said that the concept doesn't need any constant guarding or measuring.
For inspiration, the world will look at Onkalo.
Nuclear waste deposition could be a model for the future.
The waste is there regardless of what people think about nuclear power.
The problem is expensive. It should have been thought out more in the early days of nuclear power.
Other countries have tried to build their own websites. A geological disposal facility in the Gobi desert is being tested by China.
The US and the UK haven't even picked a site yet, so they're 20 to 30 years behind.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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