Government Publishes Latest Nuclear Dump Inventory and it is Shocking
- wastwater1
- Jul 23
- 3 min read
The UK Government has just published the latest update to its “best guess” inventory of nuclear waste intended for the so called ‘Geological Disposal Facility” or more accurately “Hot Toxic Sub-Sea Nuclear Dump."
Albert Einstein was spot on when he said “the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
The UK government’s continuing blind love affair with producing ever more extremely long lived nuclear wastes to disperse to the environment is a special kind of madness.
The inventory update just published can be found here
Extract:
"The 2022 Inventory for Geological Disposal
337,000m3
This is the volume of just the radioactive waste itself.
521,000m3This is the volume of the waste, plus the material we mix it with to solidify (or ‘immobilise’) it.
769,000m3This is the volume of the packaged waste in its final form for disposal, and it is how much space it will take up in a GDF. (Marianne’s note - the actual volume size of the GDF would be far greater up to 50km square they say as spacing would be necessary between the HOT packages to dilute and disperse the intense heat - in theory!)
This estimate is based on the position in 2022 and is kept under review."
and
"Today, nuclear power is viewed by the UK government as essential to the low-carbon energy mix and securing our energy supply in the future. The Welsh Government also supports nuclear new build. NWS will provide for the safe disposal of waste already created over the past 70 years – and will enable the UK to increase nuclear energy capacity by preparing to safely dispose of future waste."
also
"The packaged volume of the high heat generating waste is approximately one tenth of the waste in a GDF. But, it’ll account for about 95% of the radioactivity a GDF will protect people from at the time we close it in 2200."
So - the waste would continue to heat up for centuries reaching levels of 200 degrees c (gas mark 6 on your oven). Research is ongoing and each research paper says more research is necessary, into the impacts the heat would have on the integrity of the containment. There has been no research on the impacts of the atomic heat on the climate, or the seabed or the ocean.
The intense heat is of course a part and parcel of the intense radioactivity which has the power to change the planet’s DNA Those old 50’s monster movies were quite right in the sense that DNA, that most important gift of the generations before us, is irreversibly corrupted by radioactivity.
So on the one hand UK government is saying that nuclear, because it produces no direct climate emission impacts at the very moment of fission (the industry does actually use profligate fossil fuel) is therefore “clean.” But on the other hand it ignores the fact that the obscene and intergenerational amount of unstoppable heat produced by the wastes, once abandoned and no longer cooled by freshwater and refrigeration at Sellafield, directly impacts the climate. This outweighs any perceived carbon benefits by a magnitude beyond all ken.
Please keep sharing the petition especially if you live in Cumbria - all this is going ahead with no democratic oversight at all by Cumberland Council. The least they should do is have a full debate and full vote before taking another step towards this monster movie of a plan to dump the wastes in order to make more.
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