Nuclear waste: keep out for 100,000 years

| September 14, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Item Link: Access the Resource

Date of Publication: July 14

Year of Publication: 2016

Publication City: London, UK

Publisher: The Financial Times Ltd.

Author(s): Michael Stothard

Nuclear agencies are searching for the signs, language and solutions that will warn our descendants to stay away.

We are in a red metal cage bumping slowly down a mineshaft to our destination, half a kilometre under the ground near the small town of Bure in eastern France. Above us are yellow fields of oilseed rape. Below is the maze of reinforced concrete tunnels that, if it wins final approval from the French government, will from 2025 be the last resting place for the most destructive and indestructible waste in history. This is the €25bn deep geological storage facility for France’s high and medium-level radioactive waste, the residue of more than half a century of nuclear power. When the work here is finally finished, no one must ever take this journey again or, at least, not for 100,000 years.

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