http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/300712233/a-game-changer-finland-buries-nuclear-waste-in-80km-cave

'A game changer': Finland buries nuclear waste in 80km cave

Oliver Moody13:23, Oct 14 2022

Antti Yrjonen/Getty Images

The Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository in Finland.

If the human race is still around tens of thousands of years from now, our descendants may come across a small island off the coast of Finland on which they will find the walled-up entrance to a tomb beneath a grassy hillock.

Underneath this thick layer of rubble, a tunnel snakes down five kilometres through the bedrock to an 80-kilometre warren of high-ceilinged artificial caves, which branch off into burial chambers holding one of the most dangerous substances known to humanity.

This is the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository, the world's first deep geological storage site for atomic waste, near the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant. It is designed to keep nearly 3000 24-tonne canisters of spent uranium fuel locked safely away for the next 100,000 years.