The Swedish KBS project: a last word in nuclear fuel safety prepares to conquer the world?

This paper addresses the long-standing association between the management of spent nuclear fuel in Sweden and the industry-led KBS (Karnbranslesakerhet/Nuclear Fuel Safety) research, development and demonstration project. This project was born under extraordinary circumstances during the 1970s when the future of nuclear power generation in Sweden was made conditional upon the nuclear industry's ability to publicly demonstrate the possibility of achieving 'absolute' nuclear fuel safety. Due to the success of the KBS project in bringing controversy to an end, and in winning the stamp of government approval for successive versions of its KBS concept, the achievement of nuclear fuel safety in Sweden has, for approaching 25 years now, centred on the stepwise implementation of the multi-barrier KBS-3 concept for the direct geological disposal of the nation's spent nuclear fuel. While the KBS-3 concept can be seen as representing a long-run victory of nuclear waste technology over conflictual nuclear politics in Sweden, this victory has remained incomplete so long as a site for a deep repository and the materialisation of the concept has remained undecided. Since 2002, the siting process has been re-centred on the KBS project's two historically preferred sites where Sweden's existing nuclear waste facilities are already clustered. As will be discussed in this paper, just when the KBS-3 concept appears close to fully materialising itself, it has run into yet another serious hurdle and an Environmental Impact Assessment process in respect of the Swedish Environmental Code - comprehensive environmental legislation introduced in 1999, more than 20 years after the KBS project was initiated. In facing this latest hurdle, it is becoming increasingly apparent that KBS-3, through the recent internationalisation of the Swedish nuclear industry, has outgrown its identity as a national solution to nuclear fuel safety, and is on the verge of mutating into a global platform in spent fuel/high-level waste management practice and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]