Turning waste repositories into nuclear energy hubs via Nuclear Energy Insider

The search for final repository sites tends to focus on putting waste as far out of sight as possible. But there are sound arguments for turning a repository into a nuclear centrepiece.

Dr Charles Forsberg probably knows as much about nuclear power life cycle costs as anyone. And the executive director for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a pretty clear message when it comes to final waste repositories.

“We have a strong recommendation that if you build a repository you should seriously consider co-locating lots of other facilities at the repository site,” he says.

“The problem right now in a repository is that because of the history of the cold war, what we did is we built all these fuel cycle facilities after everything was totally built. Then we said: ‘let’s go find a single-purpose repository to dump the trash.’

“We very efficiently separated all the benefits from the liabilities.”

This has led, in the US at least, to a policy-driven quest to find repository sites that are far from anywhere, and particularly far from other nuclear facilities.

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