For Nuclear Issues funds years of strauss laid the groundwork for the optimism typical of his day. Yet only of Nuclear Energy can lead humanity into a new better age will be another golden one if we can master the demon that is Nuclear Power. The demon mainly referred to the spent nuclear. Feel where should it go should it be discarded in the antarctic or shot into space with rockets both suggestions came to nothing too expensive and also too dangerous. A third approach has been implemented by several countries dumping Nuclear Waste in the city in One Thousand Nine Hundred Two greenpeace activists tried to stop the crew of a russian tanker from doing just that but to no avail to this day countless containers
with Radioactive Waste my on the bottom of the ocean. Thus the self image that it had because of how we dealt with technology in the Twentieth Century we saw the positive sides progress Growth Energy all buzzwords that drive things forward but we ignored the downside fall in a time on to ignore well there were only a few voices early on saying you know this is a big problem that we need to solve now was as poppy a must for food dish was most those voices didnt prevail just because its. A now the waste is then. Technology philosophy. Is one of the people charged with coming up with a concrete and objective answer to the question should it go definitely underground thats the consensus among scientists around the world locked up insult clay or granite the goal is to found a final story signed by twenty thirty one. Storage should then begin in twenty
fifty the decisive criterion is that the Nuclear Waste be stored safely for a million years. I mean your job is to a million years is an inconceivable time span for people technological managerial measures cant really County Safety for such a long period they cant. But geology can help because it deals with such timeframes and it could be said that i talk to the kyoto kirov formations that remain stable for hundreds of thousands to millions of years yeah i mean if you want to stop. By contrast we humans and i activities are many snapshots the Pyramids Of Giza have been standing for four and a half thousand years. The cave drawings of lascaux have survived for as much as Seventeen Thousand years. Homo sapien means the modern human evolved in africa or as recently as Two Hundred Thousand years ago and now homo
sapien is once to build something that will last a million years. Or is that just the number invented by politicians to loveless Nuclear Power in its radioactive legacy is a politically explosive issue in germany. Lol being told yes they. Gave me. The whole. Idea my. Goal a burn in lower saxony in One Hundred Seventy Seven the government decided to build a Final Repository for highly radioactive Nuclear Waste here in a not so dime one point six billion years was spent on exploration there were vehemently protests from the outset and not only about the permanent way step by
the demonstrators were against Nuclear Power per se. Most recent transport of Radioactive Waste to go away but it took place in november twenty seventh in the same year the federal government had decided to phase out Nuclear Power. In twenty thirteen the year in which the repository Site Selection act was adopted. Exploration was halted the old bogeyman are a thing of the past says Green Party Politician from Kearney His Federal Agency is responsible for finding a final reponse to tree leaders because the debate about final storage the possibilities and limitations and also the impossibilities was always shaped by whether you were for or against Nuclear Energy all of that Central Question has been solved by Policy Makers the decision to get out of Nuclear Power has been clearly taken the task at hand now is solving the problem that exists we cant just close our eyes and say were not interested its here that. The situation in sweden
is different sweden is even holding a competition about who will be allowed to solve the Nuclear Waste problem two towns fought to become final repositories the municipality of. Two hours north of stockholm is now supposed to receive all of swedens Nuclear Waste. This is where the Final Repository will be built below a forest near the baltic coast the depth of five hundred metres. Whats incredible from a german perspective is that the population of osama is anxious to see construction begin. Lashing this thing if the safe place then we should take the responsibility to store it here i guess if i think its good. Creates lots or. Think its good for the Community House prices will go up. Im really positive that what to do we we had we had these things to take care of and we have to do it somewhere. Most hammer and to go all a bit of the far north the man doesnt want to go into that he has a simple explanation for the residents attitude. When you Care Community we have been your. Plant side out there which means that the understanding of the perception and for that matter the goodwill of the Nuclear Industry is of course much bigger here that compared to many other places and i think youre a lot of people feel quite proud of the fact that that youre participating in the pioneering process. To test holes are currently being drilled at the site of the future depo if environmental officials in the Parliament Give the green light then construction will begin in twenty twenty two. The project will create up to Seven Hundred jobs in addition the men negotiated a bonus of one hundred fifty Million Euros for the town. You may say that we were clever enough to to to decide we we wanted they sprung the industry and of course at the end of the road there was a threat or whatever in order to be successful with this very difficult program they want they had to make sure that. They have a good cooperation with the municipalities. The industry the man means the swedish Final Repository operates a s k b its employee in the nonhome has been responsible for Public Relations in osama for many years. Now i. Mean. The exact location of the repos a tree is kept secret sweden has also become cautious a trip to the storage site for low and intermediate level Radioactive Waste its been around for many years the Final Repository for highly Radioactive Waste will probably look similar one day. Being an old home and her colleagues have set up an exhibition down here its to explain the swedish concept of visitors and alleviate fears of the final repose a trip. Transparency and openness thats the operators strategy. That knowledge we have except there is also we have fire system and that is very important for us but also it would take a long time to create all this if we are talking about the facility which will be open for iran sixty years we will push it over to coming up for a shuts the door so we push for
a solution for that. Not everyone sees it that way. There are skeptics in sweden too. Weve got one of them is you know one son the head of an environmental organization. He believes his fellow swedes are too laid back about the final reponse trick question. What we are putting all the future generations of the risks by by by doing a project that we will not work it is frustrating that debt that so much effort has to be done to fight the project in the service but even the environmentalists are fundamentally opposed to storing Nuclear Waste underground there are more guards now since their most recent visit the entrance to the future final storage site resembles a prison gate. I
think you will that you will reach clear if you are in the castle yesterday you want to come by the vehicle again. Although if we were allowed to film the cars. The construction. Site is located on an island its almost impossible to see what happens there good protection from terrorists but also from critics in hama harbor these two are planning the next step of their educational campaign. Plots like the Horrible Snuffle the idea in sweden is to put it in Copper Canisters and then down into the bedrock. And the problem appears to be that the copper well be destroyed much faster than intended so instead of being faced pour One Hundred Thousand years it may break down only after a couple of hundred years of my liking i just know there will be
a referendum in hama in february twenty eighth seems the residents could still change their minds about the Final Repository project but johan slant knows the likelihood of that is low people in sweden have a high trust of of government of of politicians but especially of the government agencies. And f k b is perceived as being something part of the government and therefore that its easier for them to have trust. Critical oversight of the final report the tree project is very important but in sweden to the greatest dangers are above ground Nuclear Waste storage is all about risk tradeoffs. Oscars harm this town also applied to be the site of the Final Repository thats right applied but the granite here turned out to be less stable than that of its
rival applicants thats why i asked hama won the bid nevertheless further research on final report the tree safety is being conducted on the outskirts of town Four Hundred And Forty Nine meters below ground in the s. P. L. Hardrock laboratory. The s k b company runs a test lab here one of the things it studies is the clay that would be used to envelop the Nuclear Waste costs. If i had a responsible for Public Relations and geologist olga musk and scalia admit that theyre still experimenting. Sometimes when you do it for a year you see that theory in practice arent the same thing from the mistakes you learned to do do with the right way so making mistakes is important. Man hair not finding them. Trial and error thats the principle Nuclear Waste disposal escapee has been using for the past forty years to find the
best storage method. This film is intended to explain the concept to visitors if you will elements are to be enclosed in copper containers. Deep down in the granite special machines then lower the containers into the bore holes then the holes are filled with special Bentonite Clay Nature the entire system of tunnels is gradually filled to when the storage site is full after eighty to one hundred years it will be closed forever it wont be marked its supposed to be forgotten the swedes say that theyve done enough research to get moving after all new insights will always come along. Just waiting for for a better technique wont think just anywhere because thats thats thats what how would you know whats a bad defeat maybe something happens tomorrow maybe next year we wait in feet until then lets think here. Thats not the solution that is just. Not doing anything. The swedish approach also has risks water is already entering the granite via cracks the. Breaker is performing a long term experiment to find out what that will mean for the Nuclear Waste containers but s k b only wants to reveal its results after all the permits have been approved is that transparency. In germany things are progressing more slowly at least theres a plan for searching for the final riposte tree now. It officially starts with a blank map but experts already know that such a final repast tree can only be built insult clay or granite salt domes many exist in northern germany. Clay can also be found in the north as well as in the region
around and like constance. Granite is found in Eastern Bavaria and in saxony geological formations such as soap domes have grown over millions of years the layers of rock above are Safety Barriers that would prevent a release of the Radioactive Waste even if there were major changes to the surface. So much can happen in a million years there was a time when the alps grew by five millimeters a year so in theory a Mountain Range with a height of Five Thousand meters could grow up during that period all that could be a new ice age those are uncertainties we have to live with if we want to get our Nuclear Waste below ground. Going to continue here because well never have one hundred percent safety at
a given time because our knowledge will progress but in my view theres no alternative to this route to my worry is the longer we wait the more we run the risk that the politicians will find it less and less attractive to take responsible. Quality other routes will seem increasingly attractive such as the one that for me is out of the question the cheap route namely disposing of this waste in a country other than germany we can go to. That has been out of the question so far according to the principle that the polluter should pay Nuclear Waste has to be disposed of its country of origin decades of research have gone into how Nuclear Waste can be stored in the safest possible manner in germany at the institute for Nuclear Waste disposal in carls were for example unfortunately german scientists were long seen as willing accessories to the Nuclear Industry. And. The feeling that exists in many places right now is distrust. People dont really know what to believe anymore and the scientists have a hard time regaining that trust with the kind of statements they make so i think itll be a while before we get back to a place of mutual trust is going. On. Trust thats something the scientists hope to get by doing well founded research and by being transparent about their results they want to find out what dangers are caused by Water Infiltrating into a Final Repository. Folk amends works with highly radioactive plutonium. The dangerous material is stored in shielded boxes and is only moved with the help of robotic arms the chemist is testing how radioactive substances inside a car react when they come into contact with Water Rusting Casks deep in the ground up to now thats been
a horris an area but the tests have delivered surprising results. There is much to suggest that rust on the Final Repository container binds and even holds back the dangerous radio new clients thats all you. Have on the market long before that i was on flex to size even though we think of it as a bad sign of containers corroding and water is approaching the wasteful and it turns out that this Corrosion Process can provide protective factors and is not necessarily simply a disaster there are other interactions here that were looking at in this experiment we can expand the scientists in karlsruhe or simulate the ways in which radioactivity from a final depo could enter the environment. The first step is to determine what happens to radioactive substances that leak from
their container and come into contact with water. Chemist marcus meyer is an expert in this scenario. It will inevitably occur sooner or later in our final report a tree and put it in some of them even put. Do the radionuclides dissolve in the water allowing them to be transported quickly during the experiment a greenish sediment appears in the test tube can we get that we can compare the colors if we look at the precipitant id say its definitely plutonium for you. That indicates that the water only takes up a small amount of the plutonium a significant amount remains in the Final Repository as a precipitate meaning it wont reach the surface. Most guys remains cautious regardless he too says well never have one hundred
percent safety but how safe is safe enough the fog is its a difficult question to answer always depends on the society in question for me its like this if we stay below the Risk Potential that nature gives us then thats a very good concept. So whats safe enough is certainly a good question but the actual question is shouldnt we at least move to a state the safer than the one we have now so when the small. So the Nuclear Waste should go underground into Granite Rocks for example Geochemist Toss and schaefer and his team are examining this Type Of Rock Granite is very hard but craggy if it is to house a Final Repository the containers need an extra wall with the Clay Material Bentonite for example like in sweden it swells when it comes into contact with
water. Yes michele and that if were looking at how this bentonite swells to fill the open space maybe to the extent that it becomes completely sealed off. Cracks in the rock could be sealed up this way radioactively contaminated water would be sealed in in the simulation only a small portion of the radionuclides managed to escape from a final report the tree thats good news for the client the federal government will like hearing these results but this is whats making some people suspicious. Why does a positive imports often must we have to look at all these positive messages in detail do they really help us find a solution to the problem rather they just small interesting effects that can be interpreted either way. Vet and con this country feel we have to be really concrete
about what they mean so we dont run the risk of having all this night in distracting signs that doesnt provide a relevant solution to the problem that us popping of us better than most and. Nice science whats also nice for politicians is that they dont have to decide anything as long as the scientists are still researching calculating and testing Clowes Fisher operative and his colleagues are working on long term safety analyses for finally reponse injuries. Research commissioned by the government designed to produce many encouraging results push apple vehemently rejects that challenge. Was. Sure no were not trying to make anything look good or wed lose our legitimacy if we did that we can all make things look good but i dont think that scientifically acceptable we shot some fish and shellfish ok all. The geologist believes that the science is advanced enough that we can Start Building final storage sites. You. The Computer Program viewer to us will soon allow scientists to conduct safety tests in a virtual Final Repository class for apple knows that the longer we search for the perfect side the more critical the temporary storage above ground will become. Again as it turned the end of the lifetime of an interim storage site i have to move the spent Fuel Elements i can leave it in the car six research has been done into the changes that this fuel will undergo over those periods of time lets just say the situation in the casks doesnt improve with age that means the problem becomes more and more urgent the longer it persists for the end of a. Cast or Nuclear Waste cask is safe for forty years experts say when scientists like Klaus Fischer appled urges to hurry environmental organizations and
citizens initiatives listen with mistrust but the situation today is different from fifty years ago the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of host rock have been studied around the world at the beginning but its agree that a Final Repository under good geological conditions provides a high degree of safety due to its depth and that we should take advantage of that as long as we still can get money from alls we always assume that our society will continue to develop the way it has done for the past hundred hundred fifty years but what of a big Natural Disaster strikes that at that point the final storage issue wont be the priority anymore itll be in last place i. Trust that. Many experts believe the time is ripe and yet decades will pass in germany before a Final Repository can start operating. Why thats the case becomes very obvious here at the last
a two minute. This is where the mistakes of germanys Nuclear Waste policy are most apparent. Mark and by stuarts and his colleagues to be as how many are responsible for site safety. Voiced in cage takes them to the first Working Level of a salt mine. Its more than one hundred years old. The miners deliberated shafts were widens to such an extent that they became unstable. At a depth of Four Hundred Ninety meters the geophysicists measure how The Rock Is Moving Centimeter By centimeter. Is visible to the naked eye that the ground is bulging dangerously thats fine yes
yes what you can see here under this line is pressure from the rock on the southern flank the roofs of these Mining Chambers are around five to six meters thick and this pressure from the rock causes the hollow spaces to be compressed at the same time these mining levels bulge in the end they will crack due to the defamation but its not a pretty picture shots with. Nevertheless Nuclear Waste has been stored here since the late one Nine Hundred Sixty s. A total of One Hundred Twenty Six Thousand containers with low level and intermediate level Radioactive Waste. To build out in going up and. These are the images that have become etched in peoples minds the digger letting the barrels drop it symbolic of how not to do final storage and it was said for a long time that everything was safe the population was left in that belief and the
authorities involved acted that way as well then suddenly when the issue of closing this mine came up we were told how dangerous it was and that there was only a short time left that doesnt exactly nurture trust if they did exactly the opposite and were still dealing with that today toward. The miners main job consists of stabilizing the salt domes. As best they can so that one day in the distant future the Radioactive Waste can be recovered water is getting in through cracks in the rock the liquid is being collected at a depth of Six Hundred Fifty Eight meters and then pumped away. Eleven and a half cubic metres every day. To the best thats what this side of the water inflow is one of the big challenges we face here we cant rule out an emergency before the final cask is recovered meaning so much water will get into the site that we wont be able to control the system at. The water isnt contaminated with radioactivity here the water further down is that the price of the Safety Measures one hundred Million Euros per year. Isnt cost to send of this money comes one hundred percent from taxpayers that means were all paying for the sins of the past. Isnt it in the knowledge that individual Companies Made a fair bit of money creating this waste that it will get hurt in. The chambers with the Radioactive Waste are deep in the ground covered over by Concrete Experts fear conditions down there may be catastrophic thats why the German Parliament decided
in twenty thirty to retrieve the waste but without knowing whether that retrieval was technically feasible the governments advisory body on Radiation Safety is now recommending that the as a mine be closed off forever keeping it open or closing it forever that question but also arrives for a future final repast. Some specialists insist that. The final story site should remain accessible so that Emergency Measures can be taken if needed. The majority of experts disagree however they say the danger that the wrong people can get access is too great after all the Final Repository would contain substances that could be used for weapons and guarding the waste all the time is impossible they say. While guards and concrete cant replace geological barriers in the long term in my view below ground we need the security of these geological barriers because that gives us a whole new option namely that we can finally forget about the Waste Society will
forget about this waste. Forget about the waste that could be risky people in the distant future could accidentally open this pandoras box and be exposed to the radiation how can we best warn them. Christian touch a linguist from berlins Technical University is looking into that he puts himself in the shoes of a person who in many thousands of years time sees a sign Reading WarningNuclear Waste in a lush lumsden fired by a savvy it out in the worst Case Scenario they neither know that its a message nor that its meant for them or anyone at all and they dont understand
what it means if we look at old german i can read it because im a german linguistics expert and only because ive been trained to read it for an ordinary german conductor stand it and thats just One Thousand Five Hundred years ago but what if Three Thousand years have gone by Assistant Titles and other five gallons and. Thats why in the one Nine Hundred Eighty s. A french italian team researched alternative ways of conveying information. They suggested breeding genetically modified cats whose fare lights up when its exposed to radioactivity. Special nuclear flowers could also warn people in a more sustainable manner than writing with symbols. Information has never been deliberately passed on and understood across such
a long time period. But never before did humans have such a great responsibility to subsequent generations the challenge of creating final repose a tree is huge its probably the most complex Infrastructure Project in history and its a tough test for democracy what is really the right moment to begin it. Of knowledge keeps developing in science that means theyll always be progress in what we know final storage in a Deep Geological Repository is one option of keeping the radionuclides away from the biosphere for a very long time as far as we know from the other option would be to do nothing with. Archaeologist Cornelius Holt off from Lunar University in sweden agrees that
doing nothing is a bad idea even though we may have to admit to ourselves that the task at hand is actually too much for us. To go to because the biggest challenge is to conceive of the time periods were talking about as an archaeologist i have some insight into ancient Human History if we think about how old homo sapien is is then were talking in Two Hundred Thousand years roughly form of a if we think a million years into the future we can even assume that Homo Sapien Ns as a species will still be dominant on earth as an archaeologist Cornelius Hoelterhoff is used to approaching history by looking back that gives you an unusual view Nuclear Waste is the cultural legacy of our bizarre era. Could us also consider how its going to be reasons other than safety why we should preserve it or if were going to preserve it isnt there a whole different story to tell than just the one about the dangers of radioactive
waste in the study of. Nuclear waste is a remnant of our age one that we want to and have to preserve for the future it has that in common with cultural monuments although its the other way round here were not preserving it because we think its good we want to preserve it to protect ourselves from it as the for the ships. The role of cultural monuments is to tell us about a different time if we see it that way then you clear waste is one of the most important sources for learning about the second half of the Twentieth Century and thats to down. Naivete and hubris could those be the characteristics future generations will ascribe to the science and society of the late Twentieth Century will the twenty First Century go down in history as the era in which a solution to the Nuclear Waste problem is found its uncertain but were going to have to try whether were for or against Nuclear Power is it relevant now. One. Time for an upgrade. The. Church grows on buying. A house with. Poor design highlights you can make yourself. In stoops and tricks that will turn your home into something special. A Brace Yourself with interior design channel on you tube. You can tell a lot about a society by its garbage. The First Six Months was for the rich but for many poor people it offers their own chance of survival and i could be lunch for today just like that. The reporters travel to nairobi and work and people know the true value of courage. It has created a thriving parallel economy. What does all this mean for economic inequality around the world you guys are starting class walking the response to that state mr big yes we are starting to play as we walk here because were tired. And actually disrupt an economy. The rich. The truck the sluice of reports starting june eleventh on g. W