A vast tomb under the sea planned to house the UK's growing stockpile of radioactive waste is set to become the country's longest and most expensive infrastructure project.
The Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) project has been so delayed that the UK now needs to construct a network of tunnels through 36 square kilometres of rock to create a vast cavern deep underground to hold radioactive waste built up from seven decades of civil nuclear power generation, the Telegraph reports. The latest estimate from scientists at the Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), which is designing it, is that it will take more than 150 years to complete and will cost £83 billion in total. That takes it beyond the £57.8 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear power station and the £75.3 billion London to Birmingham HS2 rail line as the biggest construction projects ever built in the UK.
The Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) will be several kilometres below the seabed. (Image: Yahoo)
The Royal Albert Hall has a volume of 100,000 cubic metres and the volume of radioactive waste that needs a home is eight times that. The cavern system needed will be even bigger because it also includes tunnels, so the UK will need to excavate more than double that volume of rock. The waste includes 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel and about 120 tonnes of plutonium, most of which is stored at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
The finished structure will be even larger because the estimates do not include waste from a new generation of nuclear power stations that the government is planning. No site has been chosen for the GDF but after five decades of deliberation, the list of possible locations is down to two. One is off the Lincolnshire coast, next to the popular seaside resort of Mablethorpe. The other is off the Cumbrian coast round Copeland, another tourist area. At both sites, the plan is to sink a vertical shaft 1,067 metres deep and then construct a network of horizontal tunnels at a depth of several kilometres under the seabed.
In them, workers will carve out vast caverns in layers of impermeable clay and mudstone. Scientists hope they will provide a final resting place for the UK's radioactive waste. Once they are full, the caverns will be backfilled with cement and sealed shut, forever.
The UK has to undertake such a huge disposal operation because of the nature of radioactive materials. Plutonium, for example, has a half-life of 24,000 years while uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. That means the UK's nuclear waste will remain dangerous long after human civilisation has disappeared. "The scale of this is profound," said Neil Hyatt, chief scientific adviser at NWS, pointing out that keeping such a vast quantity of waste safe for such a long time can never be cheap.
Management of nuclear waste has been a problem for decades. Claire Corkhill, professor at the University of Bristol and a member of the government's Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Board, said the nuclear industry cannot be sustainable without a disposal facility.
Environmental campaign groups such as Guardians of the East Coast in Mablethorpe and South Copeland Against GDF in Cumbria are campaigning against it with petitions and demonstrations. Their secretary, Richard Outram, said tourism in both areas would be killed if they became nuclear waste dumps. In 2022 alone, about 4.5 million visitors went to Mablethorpe.
Summary
The UK is planning to build a vast underground tomb to store its radioactive waste, which will be the country's most expensive and longest infrastructure project. The Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) is estimated to cost £83 billion and will take more than 150 years to complete. It will be built several kilometres below the seabed and will be large enough to hold eight times the volume of the Royal Albert Hall.