Earthquake-resistant steel drum carrying 2 tons of radioactive waste arrives in Sydney next year | Australia news

A monolithic steel barrel designed to withstand an earthquake and the strikes of an airplane will arrive in Sydney next year carrying two tons of radioactive waste.

For security reasons, authorities will not say when the mega capsule – which contains four 500kg packets of a “medium level substance” – will arrive from the UK.

But it wouldn’t be an unclear issue: The barrel itself weighs 100 tons and resembles something from NASA’s space program.

Its forged steel walls are 20 cm thick, 6.5 m long and 3 m wide.

In 2015, when the first-of-its-kind barrel arrived, it was carrying 20 tons of Australian nuclear waste that had been reprocessed in France.

About 600 police and security officers took part in the mission of trucking it from the port of Kembla, near Wollongong, to Lucas Heights, a southern Sydney suburb that is the center of the country’s nuclear technology.

It is safe to assume that next year’s arrival will involve an equally high security operation.

The Lucas Heights complex is operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (Ansto).

It was home to the Australian High Flow Reactor (HIFAR), which supported medicine and nuclear science before it closed in 2007 and was replaced by the Open Pool Australian Lightwater Reactor, also located in Lucas Heights.

The waste due to arrive in 2022 is from HIFAR operations and Anstow says the material is being “repatriated” under the international principle that states should be responsible for their nuclear residue.

However, what is to come will not actually be what remains of the 114 spent fuel rods that were sent to the UK for reprocessing in 1996.

The four 500kg packages inside the drum will be the equivalent amount of reprocessed British waste.

Haven Griffiths is Ansto’s chief nuclear officer and says there is no reason to worry about the waste swap deal launched by the UK. In fact, he says, it’s a much safer and less expensive deal for Australia.

“Originally we were getting 52 barrels of 500 liters of cement waste,” he said.

“We had negotiations with the UK – when they made this route of exchange available – to switch. So instead of those barrels we are getting four cans of waste glass, which are much safer to dispose of, as well as temporary storage.

“Specifically not the material we sent, it’s an equivalent, roughly swapping the material that came from reprocessing our waste, for an equivalent material that was produced at another site in the UK.”

Griffiths says the UK must demonstrate that what will be sent to Australia is “within the limits of measurement” of the accepted definition of medium-level waste, which can remain radioactive for thousands of years.

Ansto also had to satisfy the national regulator on this point.

While saving money wasn’t the goal, Griffiths says the waste swap agreement means the taxpayer-funded Ansto will save between $12 million and $13 million in shipping costs.

Pamela Naidoo-Ameglio of the organization said that the arrival of the barrel would be a “routine and safe operation”.

“This will be the second repatriation project and the twelfth in the successful transportation of spent fuel or reprocessed waste that Ansto has implemented since 1963,” it said in a statement Monday.

“For all obvious and standard security reasons, we cannot comment on the exact route or timing of this transfer.”

The new barrel will sit alongside the original barrel in Lucas Heights until the construction of Australia’s new National Nuclear Waste Storage Facility at Nabandi, near Kemba, on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

The facility is up to the design stage and is being challenged by the original owners, so the barrels will likely remain in Lucas Heights for a number of years.

Once the Napandee is up and running, the barrels will be moved there and stored, pending a final solution that will include deep burial.

Radioactive waste in Australia is the result of nuclear medicine, research endeavors and industrial applications. Australia does not produce nuclear power.

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