16.12.2022

New TATuP issue “The future of radioactive waste disposal”

From the perspective of many scientists, important decisions regarding the storage of radioactive waste must be made as soon as possible. The Research articles in the current issue of TATuP take an interdisciplinary approach to issues surrounding the siting of radioactive waste.

You find the full issue here.

The question of permanent storage of highly radioactive waste – nuclear waste – is still unsolved in a number of countries all over the world. What are the developments, questions, and discussions that represent and define the overlong time perspective related to the realization and existence of a final repository? What happens after a site has been selected, a decision that is – from today’s point of view – still in the future in many countries? How does
climate change as a contextual factor influence the repository plans in the respective countries?

The future is unpredictable and under these circumstances, it is an immense challenge to plan and construct a nuclear waste repository that is supposed to safely store the waste for up to a million years. How long will the task of finding such a repository take, another hundred years? Ulrich Smeddinck, Anne Eckhardt, and Sophie Kuppler take a first look at this question in her introduction to this Special topic. Other research articles address the challenges in communicating the future of high-level radioactive waste disposal, the timeprints of radioactive waste management or ask the question of intergenerational justice (and much more).

Interview on Swiss repositories for nuclear waste

In the TATuP interview, Tim Vietor, head of the Safety, Geology and Radioactive Materials division at Nagra, talks about a cross-generational project in Switzerlang to dispose of radioactive waste ‘once and for all’. Nagra has just proposed the site for the deep geological reposi-tory for radioactive waste. Vietor evaluates the meaning of this step for affected communities and talks about his expectations for future tasks.

Research article and Reflections

Also in the current issue of TATuP: A Research article on Human dignity and lethal autonomous weapon systems, conference reports, book reviews, and news from the TA community.