The “world’s first industrial-scale final disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel,” planned for the Finnish island of Olkiluoto, has received a favorable safety assessment from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland (STUK). Ilkka Poikolainen, the president and CEO of Posiva, the waste management company that has been developing the Onkalo facility for decades, characterized the assessment as “a highly significant and positive milestone in the operating license process.”

Gierszewski

In late 2024, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced the selection of a site in northwestern Ontario for its deep geological repository for the country’s used nuclear fuel.

This is a major step in a plan that was first laid out in 2010. From the beginning, the plan had been clear that any selected site must be technically safe, must be accessible for fuel transportation, and must have informed and willing host communities.

By 2020, potential sites had been narrowed from an initial set of 22 communities that had indicated interest in learning more down to two specific sites.

My primary involvement was on the technical safety side. We wanted to know that we could safely build and operate the repository at the chosen site.

Following a comprehensive and open national consultation, the United Kingdom’s Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) organization on February 18 published its approach to evaluating possible sites in England and Wales for a deep geological disposal facility. A wholly owned subsidiary of the U.K. government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, RWM will be responsible for the siting, construction, operation, and eventual closure of a disposal facility for the United Kingdom’s high-­ and intermediate-­level radioactive waste.