Swedish government approves repository

Swedish Parliament Source: picture alliance / TT NEWS AGENCY | Pontus Lundahl/TT

The Swedish government on Jan. 27 approved the construction of a repository for high-level radioactive waste. The municipality of Östhammar had previously approved the location of a repository in a search process based on voluntariness. The approval must now be approved by an environmental court before construction can begin. The operator expects the repository to be operational about ten years after construction begins.

Sweden has used nuclear energy for commercial power generation since 1964, and currently has six operating Swedish reactors at three sites. The number of reactors in Sweden is limited by law to ten.

Following a referendum in 1980, Sweden decided to end the operation of existing nuclear reactors and those under construction by 2010. At the time of the referendum, six of a total of 12 planned reactors were in operation. Sweden maintained the 2010 shutdown date until the mid-1990s, but there was further debate about how to handle nuclear energy.

The debate eventually led to a new agreement between the political parties to start the phase-out earlier on the one hand, but to abandon the 2010 deadline on the other. The first reactor (Barsebäck-1) was shut down in 1999, the second (Barsebäck-2) in 2005. In June 2010, the parliament then voted by a narrow majority to abandon the phase-out law in principle, but to limit the share of nuclear energy. This would theoretically allow new plants to be built again - but only if an existing plant is decommissioned so that the maximum number of reactors does not exceed the legal limit of ten reactors.

Until the final repository is commissioned, spent fuel elements from nuclear reactors are initially stored temporarily on site at the nuclear power plant. They will then be shipped by sea to the central interim storage facility CLAB (Centralt mellanlager för använt kärnbränsle). CLAB is located near the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant and was commissioned in 1985.

On the occasion of the Swedish goverment's decision, BASE President Wolfram König spoke in an interview with Deutschlandfunk Kultur about the challenges of building a repository for high-level radioactive waste. The main topic was long-term documentation - i.e. the requirement to preserve knowledge for future generations by accurately documenting where radioactive waste is finally stored through symbols and structures.