A path-breaking decision was taken by the Swedish independent Environmental Court on Tuesday this week to reject arguments advanced by the Swedish nuclear waste industry and Swedish nuclear regulator in favour of the plans to bury long-lived high-activity radioactive waste underground, in support of independent scientific criticism by the Swedish umbrella group, MKG, representing five major environmental groups.

My observations are included in an article I reproduce below. Meanwhile, today the UK Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department has released 890 pages of consultation documents on developing nuclear waste repository, which includes advocacy of the very packaging technology using copper, rejected two days earlier in Sweden, where the technology ( called KBS3) has been developed!
Details of the UK Government consultation are also pasted below

It is the Ostrich posture: as Professor Andrew Blowers quotes evocatively in his magisterial book 'The Legacy of Nuclear Power' (Routledge, 2017) of the French nuclear industry on the Cotentin Peninsula, where La Hague (France's Sellafield) is located:
"The Cotentin is like an ostrich. It puts its head in the sand. It doesn't see the hunter, but the hunter blasts its backside with his gun!"

https://cumbriatrust.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/the-swedish-environmental-courts-no-to-the-final-repository-for-spent-nuclear-fuel/

The Swedish Environmental Court’s NO to the final repository for spent nuclear fuel

Posted on January 23, 2018 by cumbriatrust

Image: MKG/David Smythe

The Swedish Environmental Court says no to the power industry’s Nuclear Waste Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden. This is a huge triumph for safety and environment – and for the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review (MKG), the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), and critical scientists who have been presenting risks of the malfunction of the selected method. Now it is up to the Swedish government to make the final decision. ~ MKG Read more here

“This is both an amazing decision and very important decision. The Swedish Environmental Court has concluded that the scientific argument and evidence presented by an umbrella group ( Göteborg -based MKG) representing a wide range of environmental organisations had more credibility than the evidence of the Swedish nuclear regulator and Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste company (SKB).
The UK nuclear waste disposal/ storage implementer, the Government-owned RWML, meanwhile is intent on obtaining under licence the SKB containment technology called KBS3 rejected as unacceptable by the Environmental court in the country of its development! Prudence might expect a ministerial re-think, but there again, this is the semidetached UK from where am writing.
Congratulations must go to Johan Swahn and his MKG team for demonstrating robust truthful science is more valuable than distorted science as presented by the so called independent Swedish nuclear regulator. This pronouncement in Stockholm this morning will reverberate across Europe sending shock waves into the nuclear waste establishment; as it should.”

Dr David Lowry

Dr David Lowry is a research consultant with specialist knowledge of UK and EU nuclear and environment policy.

The KBS-3 concept has been adopted by the UK for high level nuclear waste and spent fuel and this short slide show by Professor David Smythe summarises why it does not work.

The Swedish Environmental Court’s NO to the final repository for spent nuclear fuel: a major victory for safety

http://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/a-la-une/the-swedish-environmental-courts-no-to-the-final-repository-for-spent-nuclear-fuel-a-major-victory-for-safety.html

“This is a triumph for us. From now on, the work on evaluating safer disposal solutions will continue. The decision that will be made concerns waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years. Several independent researchers have criticized both the applied method and the selected site. There is a solid documentation as base for the Environmental Court’s decision. It is hard to believe the Swedish Government’s conclusions will be any different from that of the Court’s” says Johan Swahn, Director at MKG and Chair of NTW Radioactive Waste Management Working Group.

This article is an extract of the full article of MKG.

Article by Johan Swahn published on 12/12/2017 on the on-going licensing process in the Swedish Environnemental Court for the proposed final repository at the Forsmark NPP.

Summary of the Court Statement (in swedish)

The Environnemental Court’s Statement to the government (in swedish)

Policy paper

Documents

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/676402/thumbnail_Final_NPS_Consultation_Document.pdf.png

National Policy Statement for geological disposal infrastructure: implementing geological disposal - a consultation

PDF, 549KB, 34 pages