Europe’s Crowded Underground

By Alessandro Torello

Europe is looking into burying stuff underground as a sensible way to limit climate change and environmental dangers.
The European Commission — the European Union institution that proposes new legislation — said Wednesday that the 27 EU countries should come up with plans to dig hundreds of holes of between 400 and 700 meters deep and bury their highly radioactive nuclear waste.

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A Greenpeace activist measures radioactivity as a train carrying nuclear waste leaves the station in Valognes, France, on Friday.

This is the safest way to dispose of such dangerous leftovers in the long term, given that the decay time can reach a million years, the commission said.
The issue of nuclear waste storage is becoming more important as nuclear power enjoys renewed attention in the EU. Some countries have decided to lengthen their reactors’ life span, while others, such as Poland and Italy, are considering entering the 14-member EU nuclear club.
Reasons for this range from a desite to reducing dependence on energy imports, to governments’ efforts to tax energy utilities for keeping reactors running longer. One crucial element is that, putting aside renewable energy, nuclear is one of the cleanest methods to produce electricity in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, for which the EU has set stringent targets. Many countries will have to sharply cut their emissions to meet these targets.
Another way of limiting carbon dioxide emissions, by coincidence, also involves putting stuff underground. Carbon Capture and Storage — programs using that could be operational by the end of the decade — aims to prevent the CO2 produced by a power plant as it burns fuel such as coal from being emitted into the atmosphere. The idea is for the CO2 to be shipped by pipeline into a depleted oil or gas field, or deep saline aquifers.
It looks as if the European underground could start getting crowded in 15 to 20 years. Except some countries are beginning the think about creating some gaps down there. Some, led by Poland, are taking a serious look at production of unconventional or shale gas that is trapped in rocks and now extractable using new technologies that are shaking up the world gas market.
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2010/11/05/europes-underground-gets-crowded/?KEYWORDS=%22power+plant%22+OR+%22megawatt%22