The future of nuclear energy depends on the industry finding somewhere to put the high level waste. This is radioactive for millions of years and must be isolated from the environment. The hitherto intractable problem was apparently solved by the Swedish nuclear industry who proposed a plan to encapsulate it in copper canisters and bury it in tunnels 500m underneath the Baltic sea at Forsmark. The full environmental impact report was released last year; the government requirements are that the company SKB show that the waste will not emerge from the canisters between 100,000 years and 1 million years. After studying the report in detail it became clear that the design was flawed because it did not include consideration of the Helium gas produced from the alpha emitters. The volume of gas in each canister would cause it to explode long before 100,000 years resulting in the contamination of the Baltic Sea by the equivalent of 2000 Chernobyl accidents. Back to the drawing Board guys!

Paper is at http://www.bsrrw.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/forsmark_ecrr_busby...