Dealing with waste

No country has learnt how to get rid of nuclear waste—and this is the biggest challenge that the industry faces.

• France, which gets 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, stores high-level reprocessed waste at its La Hague plant. Here, 40 years’ worth of highly radioactive waste is stored under three floor surfaces, each about the size of a basketball court, where it awaits final geologic disposal. The French are still looking for sites where the waste can be disposed of. In the late 80s, the waste issue almost threatened to halt the programme when people in rural France protested. They didn’t want a nuclear dustbin under their feet. France then decided to build 3-4 research laboratories to study various options for stocking waste.

• India gets 3 per cent of its power from nuclear energy and hopes the deal with the US will help it generate about 25-30 per cent nuclear energy in some time. But India’s search for a permanent waste disposal site that has been on since early 1980s has been marred by controversy and protests. Like in France, nobody wants to live on a nuclear graveyard.

• China gets barely 2 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy, so tackling waste isn’t a problem yet. But over the next 15 years, if China goes ahead with its plans to build 30 new reactors, it will have to worry about disposing over 1,000 tonnes a year of waste. There are plans to expand a small facility in western Gansu province to deal with the spent fuel. Environmentalists say poorer areas—and Tibet—may be forced to host China’s nuclear waste.