STUK said that it has now made its preliminary safety assessment of the decision-in-principle application and has told the Finland government that in its opinion, there are no nuclear safety-related obstacles to expanding the facility. The fuel from the new unit could safely be placed into available disposal area at the Olkiluoto site, said STUK.
In 2000, the site for Posiva’s repository at Eurajoki near Olkiluoto was selected and Posiva is already building an underground characterization facility known as Onkalo. The repository is expected to be in operation starting from 2020. The repository site will also house an encapsulation plant that will encase spent fuel assemblies into steel and copper canisters ready to be embedded in clay within a network of tunnels some 400 metres underground in solid bedrock.
Presently, Finland has four operating nuclear power units with a fifth unit called Olikiluoto-3 which is under construction. Environmental impact assessments are under way for possible new reactors at the two existing nuclear sites (TVO’s Olkiluoto 4 and Fortum’s Loviisa 3). Further, Finnish energy consortium Fennovoima has applied for a decision-in-principle to construct a nuclear power plant at one of three possible new sites.
In March, 2009, Posiva submitted a decision-in-principle application for an expansion of the repository to accommodate spent fuel from Loviisa 3. The expansion would raise the total capacity of the repository to some 12,000 tones of uranium, according to Posiva.
