This really belongs in the geothermal thread, over here:
More on topic, Germany (yes that place full of lazy chabuduo people—not!) is facing a complex reckoning as they attempt to store part, and not all, of the nuclear waste they’ve produced. It’s friggen’ hard with a radioactive time scale none of us can fully image.
Note the discussion of costs for this (not yet complete) back end storage site, which I underline is not adeqately large to store the waste i.e. they will need more sites too:
Germany has a “problem” with the leftovers from nuclear power projects, construction manager Christian Gosberg told reporters. “We cannot leave it for decades or centuries above ground where it is now.”
However, building a storage facility has proved “significantly more complex” than he expected when he joined the project six years ago, Gosberg said.
The expansion of the old mine comes with “special challenges,” he said, adding that much of the machinery used to excavate the tunnels has to be taken apart and reassembled underground.
In some cases, every piece of rebar has to be placed by workers and “individually screwed together,” Gosberg said. “The whole process is extremely complicated and of course takes a lot of time.”
Building delays have pushed the opening back and driven up the cost to about 5.5 billion euros (US$5.9 billion).
Guy