Many readers of this article may never see the planned nuclear power plant in action. It is virtually certain that none of us will be alive when the highly radioactive waste – spent nuclear fuel – is finally disposed of. Even if we act quickly, it could take a hundred years, Anu Jõesaar writes in the Tartu University journal Universitas Tartuensis.

The preparation for the construction of a nuclear power plant is a test of the strategic thinking of our people and the maturity of our country. If the Riigikogu votes in favor of nuclear power, Estonia will become the world's smallest country to run a nuclear power plant. The smallest on this list right now is Slovenia with 2.1 million inhabitants.

The location is not arbitrary

According to a preliminary assessment, a small modular power plant could be built in Estonia, but geologists need to identify suitable sites.

Geologist Andres Marandi, the head of hydro-geology and environmental geology department, said that in his profession, emotions do not count, you have to rely on facts: "If there are environmental problems, such as with plants or animals, these can be replanted or repopulated. But the mineral resource cannot be moved from its location. It's the same with radioactive waste sites. If we want to bury the waste or store it temporarily, the site has to meet very specific requirements."

In Estonia, the most important requirement is that the groundwater is not contaminated. Deep underground sites are best for radioactive waste disposal, but to get to the granite bedrock in Estonia, you still have to cross aquifers from which water is drawn.

Estonia is not comparable to Finland, where the granite layer is so close to the surface that it can be reached without crossing the aquifer.

Areas suitable for the plant and first disposal have now been mapped in Estonia, with the additional condition of access to cooling water.

"The rational side of the decision is that once the sites have been selected based on geological preconditions, the only decision that can be made is whether we put the plant on it or not," Marandi said. "We can't shift the location."

The biggest risk is human factor

Usually, the biggest fear is that a nuclear power plant will release radiation or explode. But Siiri Salupere, a research fellow in radiation protection at the Institute of Physics, said nuclear power is the most regulated form of energy production. Radiation facilities combine two different types of monitoring by both the license holder and the national environmental monitor. 

Western countries have determined that the probability of accidents at nuclear power plants that pose a risk to the public is very low.

Alan Tkaczyk, an associate professor of engineering science at the Institute of Technology, has visited dozens of nuclear reactors around the world, including the Fukushima plant before the tragedy. All were normal nuclear power plants that appeared to be running smoothly. Accidents at nuclear facilities are usually caused by human error or disregard for rules by employees, rather than system failures or external attacks, he said.

For example, in 1999, an accident occurred at a spent fuel reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, Japan, because three technicians refused to admit to their superiors that they were behind schedule. "In order to speed up the fuel reprocessing process, they decided to proportionally increase the input quantities of the components. However, they did not consider that this would exceed the critical mass of nearly 20 kilograms, which would result in an intense chain reaction. Unfortunately, they died as a result," he said.

The physicist stressed the importance of following nuclear safety rules and safety culture, citing the incident at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio, USA. In 2002, a particularly dangerous situation was uncovered: Boric acid had corroded a cavity in the wall of a nuclear reactor operating at high pressure and temperature. As a result, a section of the pressure chamber that had corroded to a thickness of less than one centimeter had to withstand a pressure of nearly 150 atmospheres. A break in the wall could have resulted in a leak and one of the most dangerous nuclear accidents (LOCA).

It was later discovered that corrosion due to boric acid leakage had been occurring for more than six years, although it should have been detected during regular maintenance. Given the seriousness of the situation, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) shut down the plant for two years and fined the company $1 million. Over the past 15 years, the same plant has also experienced up to five unsafe failures.

It is worth mentioning that nuclear reactors with more difficulties than average are located in places where they were constructed in the 1970s to replace fossil fuel plants. Many of the employees were recruited from previous plants.

Specialists said that some of the problems occurred because people retained a "fossil fuel plant mentality": if something happens and work stops, we need to get the plant back up and operating as soon as possible, because every minute matters. It's possible that the rush has compromised safety.

Such a mentality is unsuitable for a nuclear power plant. "In a nuclear power plant, you cannot sacrifice safety, for time or money," he said.

"Both the legal framework and people's behavior differ from country to country and region to region, so the related regulations and legislation must be different in each country and region."

The unpredictable behavior of a large neighboring country is another issue.

Much to learn from Finland

In addition to internal station monitoring, there must be very good independent national monitoring. Finland, which has one of the best monitoring systems in the world, is a good example of this, according to Alan Tkaczyk.

"They are competent and transparent, adequately funded, and have the courage to make decisions on their own, which few countries can do," Tkaczyk said. For example, Finland's Radiation Protection Authority (STUK) was able to put the construction of the third reactor at Olkiluoto on hold for about 10 years while it waited for the necessary requirements to be met and for detailed drawings to arrive from France.

Even in Finland, there is reportedly a problem of overlapping experts in core organizations. At a seminar organized by the Ministry of Climate last November, Finnish speakers emphasized the importance of role separation, expert independence, and the location of experts in different ministries.

In Estonia, which is much smaller, very careful consideration needs to be given to how to ensure that regulators have sufficient funding and legal and substantive independence. For example, whether national regulators may also have worked for the operator. In a literal sense, these roles should not be filled by former classmates or colleagues.

Estonia is not alone in taking these steps. The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) review of events in Estonia did not end with the first mission. The IAEA mission will also review how the country has worked, step by step, to develop guidance materials for considering the introduction of nuclear power in the country.

The preparatory work in Estonia is also being monitored internationally. This is very important: looking in the mirror may be objective, but an international perspective helps to find weaknesses.

"Even now, in the broader field of radiation protection, audits are being conducted by the International Energy Agency and national audits by the European Commission. To an outsider, this may seem overly bureaucratic, but the Estonian state can certainly handle it," Salupere said. She explained that two main technological solutions could be considered for nuclear waste disposal in Estonia.

What about nuclear waste disposal?

While countries such as Finland, Sweden and France are building mined repositories for their nuclear waste, a deep horizontal borehole solution is proposed in Estonia as an alternative solution.

It would isolate the waste much deeper — at 1,500 meters vs. about 500 meters — for potentially lower costs. Deep boreholes are more quickly deployed, given that drilling can be done in weeks, while mining can take years and even decades.

So this "deep isolation" solution would place the waste in corrosion-resistant canisters within deep boreholes drilled into rock formations that have been isolated from the biosphere for a million years or more.

"But the borehole method is still very new. Drilling methods have been tried, including retrieval of the capsule, but it has not yet been adopted anywhere for waste disposal," Salupere said. The deep borehole method promises to be cheaper, but there is also the question of the volume of waste: if, for example, several modular reactors are to be built, deep geological disposal makes more economic sense.

Madis Vasser, a researcher in virtual reality at the Institute of Computer Science, said there is a third option, called rolling stewardship: Waste is not buried, but control is passed from one generation to the next. Then you know what's going on all the time. Burying waste underground makes it difficult to control.

On a societal level, there is a lot to think about, because the knowledge about the landfill has to be passed on to the people who will be living there in, say, 10,000 years. To put it in a nutshell, the farmer of the future may find himself unexpectedly confronted with a metal door behind which lies our nuclear waste. How can we warn him? What signs will he understand? How high-tech will his world be?

On the other hand, opportunities for reuse of waste arise as time goes on. It should therefore be possible to retrieve waste from a deep geological repository. "Keeping that door open, I think, is also very important for us," Salupere said. "There may be elements in spent fuel that could be useful to us in the future."

In France, spent fuel is already being reprocessed. However, there will still be a certain amount of radioactive elements left over that cannot be used, so a disposal site will still have to be built. And there are no savings to be made here.

"Yes, nuclear waste is a very special waste. The nuclear power plant planned for Estonia is estimated to generate about 12 tonnes of spent fuel per year," she said.

Rein Koch, a researcher at the nuclear spectroscopy laboratory of the institute of physics, said that the disposal of nuclear waste must be guaranteed by the developer of the plant.

The polluter pays principle was also supported by Salupere. According to her, nuclear waste management in the world is mostly left to the energy producer and in a few cases to the state: "In general, it is better practice for waste management to remain with the producer, as it is then out of the wind of political decisions. Although in France, for example, it is left to the state and they manage their waste very well".

Finland, for example, collects a tax on every unit of energy produced, which goes to a waste management fund.

Koch was involved in the 1990s in the study of the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear tragedy on the Estonian ecosystem, as well as the creation of a gamma radiation map of the Estonian surface. In his opinion, the best solution for the Baltic States would be to construct a new joint nuclear power station to replace the Ignalina facility.

Tiger in a cage

A nuclear power plant is not just another power plant. The public needs to understand that going nuclear means accepting a new, complex system without reservation. Tkaczyk compared shale and coal plants, such as the Auvere plant, to dogs and cats of different breeds. But when a nuclear power plant comes on the scene, it is more like a tiger. It is very powerful, it produces a lot of energy, but it has to be kept in a cage.

"If we decide to build a cage for a tiger, we have to build a cage that is safe, sensible, and reasonable. In addition to building the cage, we must constantly maintain it, inspect it, modernize it, and protect it from the forces of nature and the human factor. The cage must last indefinitely and be bulletproof. We also have to consider how much the cage will cost and how its cost could change over time."

Marandi said that it is too early for such a calculation due to the large number of variables. The most optimistic timescale provided so far is for the plant to be completed by 2035. Meanwhile, new reactors and industrial technologies could emerge, as well as new waste disposal methods.

You also have to be prepared for the possibility that at some point a decision is made to cancel a project. Last fall, for example, the proposed NuScale small model reactor plant in Idaho, USA, was halted because its costs proved too high relative to energy demand.

Vasser pointed out that Estonia plans to buy a small reactor that does not yet exist anywhere in the world. The 3D images shown to the public so far bear only a minimal relation to reality. "It is worth looking at where the idea that we cannot do without nuclear energy comes from. There are a number of scenarios for solving the energy problem, and many of them do not involve nuclear power. There are cheaper, simpler and faster solutions in the range of alternatives to small plants," he said.

Salupere said that the ultimate goal of building a nuclear power plant is not to make the country solely dependent on nuclear energy. "We have not yet opened the door to discuss nuclear power as a complement to existing energy options. Do we as a country want to open it? And along with the decision that we can open it, we also have to decide what happens to the energy landscape if we don't think we can open it," she said.

Speaking of alternatives, however, the nuclear power plant and waste repository require relatively little land. "To produce the same amount of energy using wind power, you need 360 times more land, while solar power requires 75 times more land," she said.

"Nuclear energy is a low CO² energy source with a climate neutral perspective, but with its own challenges. It is a highly scientific and knowledge-based form of energy production. Expanding nuclear education and research in Estonian universities would be an indispensable step to create nuclear independence in the country and to ensure safety and public confidence," Tkaczyk said.

Koch pointed to the good example of the public information campaign in Finland before the construction of the nuclear waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant. At that time, well-prepared leaflets were distributed to the public, which were not propagandist, but asked clear questions and invited people to think.

In order to have a voice, society must first be educated. The state must be willing to support impartial research and human resource development to develop the skills needed to have a voice.

The article is published in the journal Universitas Tartuensis.

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