Commenting upon prof Gordon Edwards' recent visit to Finland, Fennovoima nuclear technology director Juhani Hyvärinen wrote: "In particular, I was amazed when the professor on several occasions openly asked whether Finland at all investigated fuel disposal. A few minutes of googling, not to mention serious information searching, would have given a reply" (See mr Hyvärinen's blog Ydinreaktioita (Nuclear reactions) 10/2/2010) - MB

Gordon Edwards:

In his blog, Juhani Hyvärinen writes that he was interested to know what I had to say about nuclear power and nuclear wastes when I visited Finland – but he never came to any of my talks, nor did he arrange to meet me, nor did he contact me after I returned to Canada. A meeting would have been easy. I had a friendly and fruitful two-hour meeting with officials at the Fortum plant in Loviisa, for example.

Apparently Mr. Hyvärinen has chosen not to follow the procedure he was taught in high school, which is to check the facts from trustworthy sources before making public pronouncements.

Mr. Hyvärinen is clearly misinformed when he says that I asked many times whether Finland has researched the subject of nuclear waste. I never asked this question even once. I know very well what Finland has announced to the world: that it has a geologic repository at Olkiluoto which is ready to receive nuclear waste and to store it permanently and safely there forever.

But surely Mr. Hyvärinen knows there is no scientific methodology available that allows anyone to prove that if radioactive waste is put in one particular place, that it will stay there for the next million years. Scientists who say such things have abandoned science in favor of an almost religious faith that nature – the great recycler – will never succeed in dispersing this waste back into the environment.

The great nobel-prize-winning physicist from Sweden, Hannes Alfvén, wrote about this very problem in 1972. What he said then is still applicable today: “You cannot claim that a problem is solved just by pointing to all the efforts that have been made to solve it.”

Perhaps Mr. Hyvärinen can explain why the United States of America has tried eight times to locate a geologic repository for high level nuclear wastes, and has failed eight times? Perhaps Mr. Hyvärinen can explain to us why Germany has now admitted that it was mistaken when it selected the Aase salt formation as an acceptable repository for high level waste?

I know very well that Finnish engineers have accomplished great things and employ extraordinarily high standards, but is Finland the only country in the world incapable of making a mistake about the so-called “disposal” of high-level radioactive waste? If Finnish experts cannot even accurately predict the cost, or even the time-frame for building the new reactor that is under construction at Olkiluoto, how can they accurately foresee a million years into the future?

On February 14, the Swedish publication Teknik reported that the Swedish Nuclear Waste Council (Kärnavfallsrådet) is now recommending against permanent irretrievable storage of high-level waste, saying that the waste must be retrievable. Are Finnish engineers paying attention? I hope so. Can Fennovoima give us even one example where the human race has successfully disposed of any persistent toxic material? No, it cannot.

In the absence of such examples, and without any scientific definition of what the word “disposal” even means, I share the opinion of the California Energy Resources and Conservation Commission: “Excessive optimism 
about the potential 
for safe disposal of nuclear wastes 
has caused backers of nuclear power 
to ignore scientific evidence 
pointing to its pitfalls. That's the real crux of what we found -- 
that you have to weigh scientific evidence 
against essentially engineering euphoria.” I would be quite happy to communicate with Mr. Hyvärinen on this and other subjects related to nuclear energy. All he has to do is call me or write me. My e-mail address is ccnr at web dot ca.