(448.4446) WISE Amsterdam - There are two possible reasons for this change: the popular opposition, and the possibility of storing the radioactive waste in large, aboveground containers. ENRESA appears to have already taken the aboveground option, hoping that technological evolution will find definitive solutions for high-level waste disposal in the future. ENRESA experts, together with experts of the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission, have already designed and are constructing containers which will be stored at Spanish reactor sites. The first is likely to be placed at Trillo.
Meanwhile, ENRESA has launched a joint research project together with the Swiss radwaste agency NAGRA at the latter's underground rock laboratory. The aim of the project is to simulate high-level waste disposal. The project is called "Febex" which stands for 'full-scale, high-level waste-engineered barrier experiment'. Febex will be carried out in a laboratory NAGRA inaugurated in 1984 in the Alps in the canton Bern. The work, which has already begun, will run until 2002. According to both agencies, Febex will provide detailed data on thermal, hydraulic and rock mechanism developments. A system of special heating elements will be used to heat the rock to roughly 100 degrees Celsius, stimulating thermal heat from the waste.
Sources:
- El Pais (Spain), 1 March 1996
- ABC de la ciencia, spring 1996
- Nuclear fuel, November 20, 1995
Contacts: Jordi Bigas, Intergral; Fax: +34 3 419 38 88 or AEDENAT: Campomanes 13 E-28013 Madrid, Spain Tel: +34-1-541.1071 Fax: +34-1-571.7108
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