The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is looking for ways to refine its strategy about nuclear waste after a report showed that one of the main repositories for waste could be full in as little as twenty years. The main nuclear waste repository in Britain is in the small Cumbrian town of Drigg handles a large amount of low level nuclear waste. The facility is part of an industry that was developed during the Cold War but now must change its strategies in the face of new environmental worries like pollution and climate change. And the news that the facility may soon be at capacity only underscores the needs for a new strategy.
Because of the fact that the facility is rapidly filling, it aims now only to take the most toxic of Britain’s low level waste so that it will not be at capacity by 2030, which is now a possibility. The facilities efforts are being supported by the United Kingdom government as well as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which hopes to launch a network of landfill and other sites for the disposal of earth, rubble, and other lower level radioactive materials.
Last month the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority finished a fourteen week study on how to handle low level waste and refine its strategies for the future. Insiders say that this new strategy will likely involve putting waste in places like landfills, where radioactive waste was not allowed to be put in the past. The Department of Energy and Climate Change says that the switch to landfills has already slowly begun as they have been accepting waste from hospitals since 2007.
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