Conceptual design of an earthquake resistant under ground radioactive waste repository

Between 1989 and 1997, Britain’s nuclear waste management agency Nirex developed a comprehensive design for an underground radioactive waste repository next to the BNFL Sellafield works in Cumbria. Using a network of rock tunnels up to 1 km deep, the facility was intended to accommodate up to 275 000 m3 of intermediate and low-level nuclear waste. However, the project was halted when a planning application for an underground rock characterization laboratory—to confirm the suitability of the site—was rejected. This paper explains the historical Selafield design—further development of generic design solutions for alternative sites will build on this work1. For over two decades all new nuclear safety related structures at nuclear power and nuclear chemical plant sites in the United Kingdom have been designed to resist the effects of internal and external hazards, including earthquakes. The ability of most of the earlier nuclear safety related structures to withstand internal and external hazards has also been assessed, so as to allow reasonably practicable improvements to be identified and implemented, and to demonstrate the risk to be tolerable.