The Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) project in Britain, which aims to store the country’s growing amount of radioactive waste, has become one of the most expensive and lengthy major infrastructure projects. The project has been delayed for so long that now it requires tunneling through 36 square kilometers of rock to create a massive underground cave to contain radioactive waste accumulated over seven decades of electricity production in the civil nuclear sector.
The volume of radioactive waste alone requires space equal to 8 Albert Hall auditoriums. The cave complex would need to be even larger to include additional tunnels, requiring the excavation of twice the volume of rock. Scientists at the Nuclear Waste Service (NWS), in charge of the project’s design, estimate that it will take over 150 years to complete at a total cost of $83 billion. This cost surpasses that of major construction projects in the UK like the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant and the HS2 London – Birmingham railway.
The radioactive waste includes 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, and around 120 tonnes of plutonium, most of which is stored at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. The project is expected to be larger once waste from future nuclear power plants is considered. British authorities are still deliberating on the location for the GDF, with potential sites narrowed down to two off the coast of Lincolnshire and Cumbria.
The plan involves digging tunnels deep under the sea to create silos in impermeable clay and mudstone where the waste will be stored. The project’s scale is immense due to
