Part 1 of 2 Parts
Elizabeth Muller is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Isolation. She says that her company expects to have a first deep borehole nuclear waste disposal site operating within “five to ten years.” Muller recently gave an interview in which she said that a combination of the need to tackle climate change and the geopolitics of energy means “more and more countries are eager to move forward with new nuclear power” with an “increasing urgency for solving the waste problem”.
Muller said that the traditional fifty to one hundred year estimated time frame for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste is changing. She went on to say that a number of locations around the world are “now interested in seeing nuclear waste disposal happen in that five-to-ten-year time frame. So that's who we're working with … I'm very confident that within the next decade we will have a disposal site that is up and running. I'm targeting five years for first disposal somewhere in the world”.
Deep Isolation’s system is to use directional borehole disposal of nuclear waste. They will build on some of the “incredible innovations that have taken place in the past 20 to 30 years in the drilling industry where it’s now inexpensive and routine to go down three quarters of a kilometer in depth and to have horizontal sections two, three or four kilometers in length”.
Deep Isolation is based in Berkeley, California. Their solution for the management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste involves emplacing it in corrosion-resistant canisters in deep horizontal drillholes. The technology utilizes existing directional drilling techniques. The waste can be retrieved during a determined time frame, or it can be permanently secured. In 2019, Deep Isolation demonstrated its concept when it successfully placed and then retrieved a prototype nuclear waste canister hundreds of meters underground via a borehole.
The horizontal storage means that the nuclear waste can be disposed of in suitable geological conditions in many different places. This includes being close to or at proposed sites where the waste is produced. Muller says, “If you're looking at only 500 meters of depth, it's harder to find a good location. If you're looking at 1000 meers, it's significantly easier to find a good location, and if you're looking at 1.5 kilometers or even deeper then I think most locations would probably qualify. We will, of course have to do a detailed analysis and study and testing to make sure … it meets the requirements for safety and environmental protection.”
Muller goes on to say that there is a further advantage to a horizontal storage system. “You can get more storage space for a given depth. You can follow a particular rock formation. There's no direct potential pathway through the vertical shaft to the surface and it's also easier to retrieve waste. You can retrieve waste potentially in vertical holes as well, but you need a structure because waste is so dense that it can compact and crush any structure that it's in whereas when you're horizontal, you don't have that problem, it's just laid out end-to-end.”
Please read Part 2 next