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We are witnessing today at the opening of another national debate in France. We are moving from the future of purchasing power in the longer term to the future of nuclear energy, particularly with regard to the remaining hazardous elements when nuclear power plants have them. finished.
In the Parisian paper of today Release, the physicist Bernard Laponche pleads for the end of the discussions on the burial of nuclear waste, presented in some circles as the best of the many solutions. He says that burial is the worst way to go, simply because it's irreversible.
The debate today is an acronym nightmare.
The central topic is the PNGMDR, ie the National Radioactive Waste Management Plan. The debate is organized under the auspices of Andra, the national agency responsible for the same problems. And the crucial question concerns Cigéo, the industrial geological storage center, under construction near the French city of Bure, in the center-east of France.
The site was chosen for its geological stability. . . not a grain of sand has changed since 100 million years ago. . . and for its thick layers of slate reputed to prevent the entry of water and radioactivity.
The idea is to drill a hole 500 meters deep, to install nuclear waste in side galleries, to seal everything and hope for the best. In 2.1 million years, the 237 neptunium sent into the hole will be half as dangerous as today; iodine 129 will take 16 million years, but is not considered a high risk substance; and, like chlorine 36, a child could play safely after only 300,000 years.
Something must be done. Last year, France had 1.6 million cubic meters of radioactive waste, mostly from nuclear power plants. A long-term solution must be found.
A disastrous legacy for future generations
Bernard Laponche said that the idea of burying what glitters in the dark is madness. How, he asks, can we impose an irreversible situation on hundreds of thousands of future human generations, knowing that the so-called solution is not really satisfactory?
If a single container leaked over the next few million years, he warns, it would be impossible to fix it.
Bernard says the containers will release hydrogen, which can explode. Underground galleries should therefore be permanently ventilated.
But what happens if there is a power failure? Because of an accident, a strike, a malicious act. After ten days without air conditioning, our incandescent containers will vibrate like blue bottles in a jar.
Not to mention the possibility of an earthquake.
Already, in Germany, the nuclear authorities are facing a multi-billion-dollar bill to extract waste buried in an abandoned salt mine where the walls have begun to collapse. And the products of the underground chemical dump of Stocamine, in French Alsace, have infiltrated into the water table since a fire ravaged the site in the early 2000s. The government has abandoned the idea of Try to reduce the problem because it would cost a fortune. Thus, Europe's largest groundwater basin is exposed to an imminent and permanent risk of contamination.
The problem will not go away. Do not rush!
Contemporary nuclear policy was put in place in the 1960s and has never been seriously changed since. But the amount of waste continues to grow and many reactors are close to the expiration date, or are gone.
Bernard Laponche wants us to wait. He says we can store products in sealed containers, in ventilated and secure sheds on the surface or nearby. And that will give science and technology a chance to come up with another type of solution. It reminds us that nuclear science is less than a century old.
Experiments using lasers and neutron bombardment have already reduced the radioactivity of plutonium. At least in the laboratory.
Laponche thinks that the budgeted 35 billion euros for Bure 's burial site would be much better spent on short – term storage and in additional research.
He says that since we are talking about such long-term risks, we should at least take a few centuries to develop an appropriate strategy.
This debate is expected to continue until September.
But the central question will not disappear soon.
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