Monday 21 November 2005
The Australian

Time is running out to permanently store radioactive waste, writes Amanda Hodge

FOR visitors to the green fields and sprawling chateaux of France's Loire Valley, there could be few more dislocating sights than the twin stacks of a nuclear power station belching grey-white clouds into the atmosphere.

Yet in a country where the provincial idyll is considered an inviolable national heritage, the French have been remarkably tolerant of these imposing symbols of industry.

That is, until the question arises of what to do with the waste generated by the 58 atomic power stations peppering the French landscape.

As one of the largest consumers of nuclear energy, with local reactors contributing 78 per cent of its electricity supply, France never experienced the passionate anti-nuclear movement that existed in countries such as Germany, the US and even Australia.

But like a growing number of its nuclear compatriots, France is increasingly concerned about what to do with radioactive waste -- particularly given that the country's only viable storage option is an underground clay shaft in the Champagne wine region.

In the US, support within Congress is declining for the proposed national high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, and local opposition is mounting.

The Australian Government's proposed solution for its nuclear waste -- building a store on federal land in the Northern Territory -- has also drawn loud protests from the public and the Territory Government.

After 15 years of research, the French Government must decide by January whether to bury its nuclear waste, now kept at its La Hague facility; find another permanent storage site; or commit to yet another intensive research program into ways of diluting it.

With the EU pushing for all member states to find permanent disposal sites for thousands of tonnes of waste temporarily stored around Europe by 2008, France is running out of time.

So, the tiny village of Bure -- just south of Reims and home to some of the most famous Champagne caves -- is likely to bear the burden of France's 50-year nuclear power legacy.

In 2002, France temporarily stored 978,000cum of waste at nuclear facilities and its reprocessing plant. By 2020, it is tipped to climb to 1.9millioncum.

For the past five years, the national radioactive waste management agency ANDRA has built and operated a 450m-deep geological laboratory in Bure, testing the clay for long-term nuclear waste storage.

The region has become a flashpoint for a relatively alien French concept: an anti-nuclear movement.

Such has been the level of public opposition to a waste dump that the Government's plan for a second geological laboratory was abandoned.

Greenpeace France nuclear spokeswoman Helene Gassin said the issue had prompted some of the largest environmental rallies in French history. Last September, about 10,000 people protested against the proposed nuclear waste dump.

"That's very important for France and particularly away from the big cities," she said.

"At the beginning, it was just people not wanting it in their own backyard, but now more and more people are saying they don't want the nuclear industry leaving a burden for future generations. Even local people, rural people who were not against nuclear power in the beginning, now realise waste is a result of the industry."

Even government-friendly green groups such as the Nicholas Hulot foundation, founded by and named after a French television presenter, would like to see a greater mix of energy power and less reliance on nuclear power.

French nuclear power and mining giant AREVA -- which operates the La Hague reprocessing facility -- admits the waste issue is controversial but rejects suggestions it could galvanise public opinion against nuclear power.

"Yes, it's controversial, but not as much as in some other countries because the waste is already vitrified," AREVA spokesman Charles Hufnagel said, referring to the reprocessing method that dilutes and encases the waste in glass.

The Bure underground option would almost certainly be the final solution, Mr Hufnagel said.

Citing Finland -- where Europe's first new nuclear plant in a decade has just been completed -- and US plans to increase nuclear power capacity, Mr Hufnagel said he was confident countries such as Germany would be forced to reverse anti-nuclear policies in the face of local and international pressure to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Germany's new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will almost certainly push back the former government's 2022 final phase-out date for nuclear energy so that no plants close during her term. But it is by no means clear that she will abandon the commitment, particularly while the problem of where to store the country's 76,000cum of nuclear waste remains unsolved.

The Gerhard Schroeder-led Social Democrat/Green alliance's decision in 2000 to phase out nuclear power was influenced by the anti-nuclear lobby's focus on the waste problem.

Mr Schroeder argued that the phase-out plan made it easier to find a disposal solution because it quantified the amount of waste to be dealt with.

In the past two decades, up to 100,000 demonstrators at a time have clashed violently with police, both over the transportation of reprocessed nuclear waste back over the border from La Hague and proposals to store the waste in a salt dome in the Lower Saxony village of Gorleben. A second salt repository in the former GDR state of Morsleben has already begun to break down and the Government faces a E2billion ($3.2billion) bill to stabilise and seal it with thousands of tonnes of concrete.

The two states with the largest number of atomic energy plants -- both CDU strongholds -- also have large areas of granite deposits, which are considered more stable sites for nuclear repositories than salt stores.

But both Baden-Wurttenberg and Bavaria have refused to entertain a dump site within their borders, and Ms Merkel is unlikely to challenge them.

"We have a temporary solution that at every single plant (there are 17), we have interim disposal facilities where the elements can cool down for about 30 years," said Bernd Warnat, from the federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

"It could be that (the Government) agrees simply not to agree and leaves things as they are, which wouldn't cause a problem, because we have 30 years until a final disposal site must be ready."

With the Christian and Social Democrats sharing power under a grand coalition, it seems unlikely that a final decision on waste disposal will be made during this term.

But Mr Warnat warned that deferring a decision beyond 2009 would give the next government less time to find a solution.