The board of Sweden’s national radioactive waste management company SKB has decided that reactor vessels from Sweden's NPPs, following decommissioning, are to be segmented before being placed within the expanded Final Repository for Short-Lived Radioactive Waste (SFR) at Forsmark.
This means a third tunnel planned at the facility will not be needed as the vessels can be taken down in sections. SKB has also decided to remove a request to temporarily store intermediate- and high-level waste at SFR from its application to expand the facility, and the waste will now be stored at plant sites.
SFR began operating in 1988 and was the first of its kind in the world. It takes low and medium level radioactive waste. It is situated 50 metres below the bottom of the Baltic sea and comprises four 160-metre long rock vaults and a chamber in the bedrock with a 50-metre high concrete silo for the most radioactive waste. Two parallel kilometre-long access tunnels link the facility to the surface.
