Name: 10万年分の核廃棄物を貯蔵するトンネルの内部 (Inside The Tunnels That Will Store Nuclear Waste For 100,000 Years)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:36:47.000Z
Duration: 6 min 9 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

- There's an urban legend that when grave-robbers

found their way to ancient Egyptian tombs,

It's not true. Not just the curses aren't real,

but those warnings were just an urban legend.

The robbers wouldn't have been able to read them.

And even if they could, the messages weren't warning of curses.

They were just the ancient equivalent of a 'no trespassing' sign.

This is Olkiluoto, an island on the far west of Finland.

And here, they're building a tomb for something that really is dangerous.

will contain the world's first long-term storage site

right next to some of the reactors that produce it.

This isn't a video about whether nuclear power is good or bad.

I think it's good, and so, it seems, does Finland.

The third reactor here is being tested now and it's due to go online next year.

But this video is about a different question.

I didn't know how it would feel until I stood here.

It is very strange to have 400 metres of rock above my head

and knowing that inside that solid plug of clay there

This new tunnel complex is called Onkalo, which translates as 'cavity'.

And long-term storage really does mean long-term:

100,000 years ago, humans hadn't made it to Europe yet;

the continent was still frozen in the middle of an ice age.

This facility is being designed to last for geological time.

that there are hundreds of nuclear reactors in the world,

right now there is no permanent geologic storage facility anywhere

for high-level radioactive waste, the spent nuclear fuel, the really nasty stuff

The world doesn't actually produce that much of it, relatively speaking.

A century's worth of high-level waste from all the current reactors in Finland

will fit in the final version of this one new facility.

But right now, around the world, high-level radioactive waste

first in water ponds that require active cooling,

well, about as long as a concrete building would;

The US has been trying to work out a storage site for years,

but their one serious attempt, Yucca Mountain,

Finland, here, is closest to building that solution.

We are talking about two thousand million years

is the age of what we have below our feet here.

and it represents the most ancient parts of this Earth.

High-level waste will be disposed of with cast-iron copper canisters,

and the canisters are put into the hole in the deposition tunnels

and then these are surrounded by bentonite clay.

which means that the water doesn't transport through the clay.

The spent fuel, when it's taken from the reactors into the disposal,

But with time, the radioactivity will decrease.

After 500 years, people can stand beside the canister

But there are some other long-lived radionuclides

in case they were to come up to the surface

and into the drinking water, into the wells or biosphere,

will isolate the waste for 100,000 years.

- This area isn't prone to earthquakes or other natural disasters.

Geologically, it's about as peaceful as you can get.

and then, for 100 years, put the casks of waste in,

and then backfill each tunnel with clay so they're encased in solid rock.

And once the site is full, fill in every bit of it,

every last tunnel, and then leave it forever.

There are multiple levels of containment.

The idea is that even if one or two of them fail,

everything will still be safe for 100,000 years,

When the US government was thinking about using Yucca Mountain as its storage site,

they commissioned a now-famous report on how to mark a site like this.

There were all sorts of ideas, from a spike field to 'forbidding blocks'.

But all those would ultimately be a big sign saying,

"Hey, there's something interesting under here; dig!"

- The facilities will be closed in about 100 years,

We have not decided what is the best way to mark that.

- There was one other idea in that research paper: