The future of Sellafield lies deep in Scandinavia

As the UK deliberates, says Tim Webb in Oskarshamn, the Swedes are digging in to make spent fuel safe

Staff at the nuclear complex at Oskarshamn, southern Sweden, held an unusual birthday party last week. Passing slices of cake around the office, they celebrated the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Sigyn, the specially constructed ship that every week transports the country's spent nuclear fuel to the Clab temporary storage facility.

The ship is named after the loyal wife of the Norse god Loki, who was chained by his enemies beneath a poisonous snake. According to legend, Sigyn held a bowl above her husband to catch the venom dripping on to his head. A scientist at the Clab facility laughs at any suggestion that the snake stands for the Swedish nuclear industry, which produces the waste.

However you look at it, Sweden is at least cleaning up its nuclear legacy. The British Government, which this week launches (another) consultation on its nuclear waste policy, could learn a thing or two. There are currently 470,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste scattered around the UK on 30 temporary sites. The Government and the industry body charged with responsibility for the waste (the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) need to decide soon what to do with it. Otherwise, public support for plans to build new nuclear reactors could be undermined.

At the Oskarshamn site, the nuclear waste joint venture SKB (owned by the German energy group E.ON and Swedish state-owned firm Vattenfall, among others) has built the world's largest underground laboratory to test conditions for the permanent storage of nuclear waste. Named the Hard Rock Laboratory (no relation to the celebrity hamburger chain), it meanders 450 metres underground. Branching off from the main tunnel, which is large enough to park a coach, dozens of horizontal chambers have been excavated. Here scientists experiment with different types of rock to discover how best to bury copper-encased, spent-fuel canisters.

The underlying principle of storing nuclear waste, on which virtually all countries with civil nuclear power are agreed, is simple. The waste is buried in a large hole deep underground, which is then filled up. The timescales are mind boggling. Scientists estimate that the spent fuel (classified as high-level waste, containing uranium and plutonium) must remain inert for at least 100,000 years. But if a better way of disposing of the waste is found in the future, it can in theory be dug up.

At the exhibition centre at Oskarshamn, which attracts 20,000 visitors a year, a poster for children uses pictures to reassure them about how quickly the risk from nuclear waste will fall. The radioactivity of a spent fuel rod starts off as big as a 22-storey building, family house. A year later, it is the size of a family house, 1,000 years later a dog kennel; 100,000 years later, a snail.

Admirable as this attempt to explain the principles of nuclear waste storage may be, it takes more than a children's poster to convince people that it is safe to build a repository near them. This challenge is even greater than actually building the repository itself. Having decided in the 1980s on how the waste should be stored, SKB has spent the past 15 years talking to local communities about where to site it. The company wrote to all of the country's municipalities to find out which were prepared to host a repository. Eight expressed an interest. Following nine years of feasibility studies looking at factors ranging from the geology to the transport links in each area, SKB whittled the shortlist down to three, of which Oskarshamn and Forsmark now remain. (The other dropped out after local opposition.)

Mistakes were made, especially early in the process. Two of the eight municipalities that initially responded positively to the SKB's overtures backed out due to pressure of public opinion, even before a definite decision on whether to site a facility in their area had been taken.

Eva Hall, SKB's spokeswoman, says that the company could have handled communications with local people more sensitively. "We should have sent press relations people, not just technical staff, to explain," she admits. SKB will make a final decision on which site to use in 2009. It hopes to start construction in 2012, with completion pencilled in for 2019.

If taking the best part of 50 years to build a repository sounds like a long time, Sweden is still decades ahead of the UK. An impasse was reached 10 years ago in Britain when the Government rejected a proposal to build an experimental underground repository at the huge nuclear site at Sellafield in Cumbria on scientific grounds.

A series of committees of nuclear experts was then appointed. After the best part of a decade's deliberations, they have concluded what the rest of the world's scientific community and nuclear industries already knew - that long-term storage underground is the best option.

The consultation process that starts this week will focus on how a location for the storage of nuclear waste should be chosen. A "voluntarist" approach has been settled on, which like that in Sweden, envisages local authorities wanting to host a repository rather than having one foisted on them. Benefits for the area would include new jobs from the construction and operation of the facility. Road and rail links are also likely to be improved around the chosen site. If they get the go-ahead, the Oskarshamn authorities intend to use the rock excavated from the building of a repository for a new railway line between the towns of Kalmar and Vastervik.

In Britain, plans could be complicated by the possibility - admitted last week in a government consultation and reported by The Independent on Sunday - that nuclear waste imported here from overseas may also have to be stored permanently.

The opinion in the nuclear industry is that a repository will be built in Sellafield. It would make sense, as that is where the vast majority of the waste is already stored temporarily.

The situation in Sweden is similar. The Oskarshamn site already hosts the Clab interim storage facility. But both the British and Swedish governments need to go through the motions of "consultation", even though everyone knows what the final decision is likely to be. The big difference is that the Swedes are a long way down the line in convincing Oskarshamn to host the site. The UK Government has much further to go before Cumbria signs up.

Further reading: For an account of management at the Cumbrian complex, read Harold Bolter's 'Inside Sellafield'