Deep Isolation, the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the University of Sheffield and NAC International are collaborating in a project to engineer canisters that meet U.K. regulatory requirements for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in boreholes up to two miles underground.
The funding comes from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund. It is intended to support the U.K.’s 2050 net-zero target by “tackling a fundamental challenge to the success of small modular reactors (SMRs) ... the need for safe, secure, scalable and cost-effective spent nuclear fuel disposal solutions”.
Deep Isolation is based in Berkeley, California. It has been working on a system of using directional boreholes disposal of nuclear waste. The company is building on innovations in the drilling industry I recent decades. This means that "it is 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’s solution for management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste involves emplacing it in corrosion-resistant canisters placed in deep horizontal drillholes. Deep Isolations approach utilizes existing directional drilling technology. The nuclear waste can be retrieved during a determined time frame or permanently secured. In 2019, Deep Isolation publicly demonstrated its system when it successfully placed and then retrieved a prototype nuclear waste canister hundreds of feet underground via a borehole.
The U.K. project will include the manufacturing and testing of two prototype canisters tailored to the U.K. requirements. A manufacturing supply chain needs to be established to support the new system.
Chris Parker is the Global Head of Business Development and Managing Director of Deep Isolation EMEA. He said, “This canister provides an option for disposal in a deep borehole that brings greater flexibility and potential cost-savings for disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.”
Parker went on to say that in the U.K., the deep borehole system would not replace the need for a traditional mined geological disposal facility but “it has the potential to reduce costs and save time for the UK's GDF program because it can accept selected high heat-generating waste streams at much greater depth”.
He added that it would also “provide us with an ideal supply chain with which to service the growing international demand for deep borehole disposal.” He said that each canister would dispose of used fuel that has enabled the generation of one hundred and thirty million kilowatts of low carbon electricity, of “a saving of nearly 27,000 ton of CO2 per canister”.
The Energy Entrepreneurs Fund grant award document stated that “high-quality disposal canisters represent a potential global market value of over GBP100 billion (USD121 billion) over the next 20-30 years. The current global inventory of waste suitable for disposal in the UK canister represents 1.1 million canisters; growth to 2035 (including reactors currently under construction or planned) represents a further requirement of 1.35 million canisters".
Alan Woods is the strategic director of the UK SMR company Rolls-Royce SMR. He is also on the project board. He said that the option of small, modular disposal of radioactive waste in deep boreholes “will be an important enabler of the international SMR markets and a great export opportunity for UK manufacturers”.
Deep Isolation has more than a dozen contracts across three continents with projects including advanced reactor and SMR waste disposal, stand-alone borehole disposal of small existing nuclear waste inventories and to work with mined repository programs to increase safety and reduce costs by moving certain nuclear waste steams into boreholes.