(Newswire.net — August 18, 2015) — The British government understands people’s fears of building underground storage for nuclear waste, however, they claim that those facilities are absolutely safe. In addition, having secured nuclear waste storage in neighborhoods is financially beneficial.
According to experts working for the government-owned Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) agency, taxpayers will have to pay £12-billion ($18.78 bn) for the construction of deep disposal sites for dangerous radioactive waste from the UK’s nuclear power plants.
An estimated £4 billion will be spent in the planning stage, before the nuclear waste is stored in sealed containers in bunkers 200 to 1,000 meters below the surface.
Due to the terrain configuration, experts say that at least 30 percent of the UK, excluding Scotland, could be geologically suitable for radioactive waste disposal.
The government’s experts say that the process of selecting a location and constructing a nuclear waste disposal is a process that can take up to 35 years, but the biggest problem is that the public that doesn’t trust their security measures.
Local opposition in West Cumbria, near Britain’s famous Lake District, successfully blocked a 2013 proposed location for a nuclear waste storage facility in their neighborhood.
According to the magazine WIRED, nuclear waste disposal is America’s favorite problem to ignore, and it just gets worse. The controversial idea is to put it all in one place, in deep tunnels below Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
Building nuclear waste storage below Yucca Mountain has been a political hot potato since no one dares to make a move and risk public outrage. However, if ignored, the problem won’t disappear.
The US is the proud owner of 75,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, that needs to be dumped somewhere. Currently, the nuclear waste is held in temporary facilities and the danger of leaking is high.
According to experts, governments should soon start educating people, explaining that it is an irrefutable fact that new storage devices are now much safer and that the US needs nuclear waste storage facilities faster than anyone is willing to admit.