The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) has announced that is has found “serious breaches” in the handling of radioactive materials at the national facility for final disposal in Himdalen.
There are four mountain halls in Himdalen, that are used to store Norway’s nuclear waste. The landfill facility is located in the Aurskog-Høland municipality and was opened for business in 1998. It is scheduled to receive waste until 2030. At the end of 2017, it was sixty three percent full. After it is closed, the facility will remain under administrative supervision for up to five hundred years.
Since February of this year, eight containers of liquid oxygenated nuclear waste were found to have been illegally stored at the facility. Three of the containers held Americium-241. They were up to fifty-seven times as radioactive as permitted by regulations. The other five containers were also more radioactive than permitted by their licenses. Americium-241 is has industrial uses in Norway. There are small amounts of Americium-241 in fire and smoke detectors in Norwegian homes. According to the NRPA, the containers were stored in 2013 and 2014. There was a risk that chemical reactions could have occurred in those containers that could have resulted in leaks of radioactive materials.
The Mayor of the municipality of Aurskog-Høland notified the police that leaking containers had been found in the Himdalen facility. When contacted, the Norwegian police say that the case has been on hold since February. They say that they do not have enough investigators to pursue the case. The Mayor has also requested that there be a meeting with the Industry Minister to discuss the management of the Himdalen facility.
The NRPA has asked the Norwegian Institute of Energy Technology (IFE) to carry out a full review of the operation of Himdalen from 1998 to the present. They are responsible for the safe operation of the facility. The IFE admit that routines have been violated at Himdalen. They say that there is no danger to the health of Norwegian citizens or to the environment because the waste is “safely encapsulated” in containers.
Norway has other problems with their nuclear industry. The JEEP II nuclear reactor at Kjeller began operation in 1951. It is one of two Norwegian nuclear reactors currently in operation. Neither of these reactors are used to generate electricity. Kjeller is a village located about fifteen miles for Oslo, the Norwegian capital. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently took a week to inspect the JEEP II reactor at the request of the IFE which operates the reactor.
The IAEA report said that the conditions at the reactor site were “inadequate.” The report detailed thirty serious problems that should be dealt with immediately. The reactor was criticized for breaches of international security regulations including fire safety, alarm and monitoring systems. The NRPA has said that is is closely monitoring developments at the JEEP II site. The Kjeller nuclear facility has be under intense observation since 2015.
Bellona is a Norwegian environmental watchdog. They have been watching the operation of the JEEP II reactor and nuclear material leaks for decades. They are very concerned about the reported problems at the JEEP II reactor. They point out that this is not the first time that the IAEA has found major problems with how the JEEP II reactor operation is being managed. A representative of Bellona said, “It does not look like the IFE is about to make the necessary steps to make the reactor safe.”