Facility for storing spent nuclear fuel for 100,000 years will be built in Finland

By Alimat Aliyeva

By 2026, Finland will put into operation the world's first underground spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage facility Onkalo. The waste will remain at the facility for about 100,000 years, Azernews reports.

The radioactive spent nuclear fuel will be packed in waterproof copper containers and buried in the rock at a depth of more than 400 meters. The Onkalo project is based on the Swedish KBS-3 technology, which consists in creating multi-level engineering structures that ensure the safety of spent nuclear fuel storage even in the event of partial failure of individual structural elements.

According to Gareth Lowe, professor of radiochemistry at the University of Helsinki, a good approach for Finland would be to build a storage facility and put it into operation in a year or two.