Universidad Nacional de Moreno

Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III

Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

Assignment 3- Nuclear Waste

1) Skim the text. Consider cognates and place the subtitles in the right section

a- Why don’t other countries use deep underground stores?

b-What are the other options for disposing of spent nuclear fuel?
c- How will Finland store its nuclear waste?
d- So how did Finland get an agreement?
e- Why don’t other countries use the same process?
f- Where do other countries put their spent nuclear fuel?
g- Which countries might be next to approve a permanent storage site?
h- Will Finland’s approval make it easier to find willing hosts in other countries?

2) Answer the following questions in Spanish

1. What is the problem in relation to nuclear-power plants set at the beginning?
2. What is the solution given to that problem in this text?
3. Which are the two crucial points needed for the approval of the storage of nuclear waste in
Finland?
4. What does the author state in the conclusion?
3) REFERENCE: What is the reference of “these” in the text.
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

4) Connectors: What is the function of the connector? What are the two concepts linked?
-Most countries agree that permanent burial underground is the best solution, although research
continues into the best ways of doing it

- “... both the United Kingdom and Canada have opted for a “volunteer first” policy…”
_________________________________________________________________________________
5) Is it ACTIVE OR PASSIVE VOICE. Explain the use and the tense used.
-Nuclear-power plants have been around since the 1950s
____________________________________________________________________________

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 Universidad Nacional de Moreno
Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III
Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

-The canisters will be lodged into a network of tunnels cut out of granite bedrock 400 metres
underground
- salt formations at Gorleben in the north were studied for decades…
____________________________________________________________________________________

6) Relative Clauses (underline the relative clauses in the sentences below and indicate whether they are
defining or non-defining)

But the spent nuclear fuel that they produce is highly radioactive and there are no facilities that can permanently
and safely store it.

Once the facility is sealed — which Finnish authorities estimate will be in 2120 — it should safely isolate the
waste for several hundred thousand years

The United States, which has the largest number of nuclear-power stations in the world, selected a site at Yucca
Mountain in Nevada in 1987, and has invested $15 billion in it.

7) Report the following ideas extracted from the text:

-“The local council that serves the island was initially firmly opposed to the proposals”, says Matti Kojo.

- “One is a safe site. The other is a supportive community who will work together with the developer to shape
the project,” she says.

8) Watch the following video. How Nuclear Power Plants Work / Nuclear Energy (Animation
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UwexvaCMWA up to 1:00m) Say true or false
a. Nuclear-power plants are thermo-power plants which generate electricity.
b. In the turbine building, there are several turbines as well as the generator.
c.Hot water is cooled in the cooling tower
d.The nuclear reactor is placed in the cooling tower.
9) Look at the following abstract and indicate the different parts of a paper which are present here

Materials and method- Discussion- Results- Introduction

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 Universidad Nacional de Moreno
Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III
Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

A system for the calculation and visualisation of radiation field for

maintenance support in nuclear power plants
Yukiharu Ohga, Mitsuko Fukuda, Kiyotaka Shibata, Takashi Kawakami, Tomokazu Matsuzaki

Radiation Protection Dosimetry, Volume 116, Issue 1-4, 20 December 2005, Pages 592–
596, https://doi.org/10.1093/rpd/nci014

Published:20 December 2005

Abstract
A system has been developed to improve the efficiency of maintenance work while decreasing the
radiation exposure of maintenance personnel in nuclear power plants. The input data for dose rate
calculation are automatically generated by using computer-aided design data. Changes for the input data
corresponding to the progress of maintenance work, such as installation of a radiation shield and removal
of a component, are easily input interactively on a graphical user interface (GUI). A new method was
proposed which searches the sets of source and detector points between which gamma-ray attenuation is
changed by the component movement. The calculation is performed only for the changed sets, so that the
change of the three-dimensional dose rate distribution is calculated rapidly according to the work
progress. The dose rate distribution and the radiation exposure of maintenance personnel are displayed
three-dimensionally in colour with plant components and pipes on the GUI.

10) Underline 2 important sentences in the abstract that would make a good summary and translate
them into Spanish.
11) Write a text in Spanish including the content and main concepts from the text, the abstract and the
video. Use the activities done for each one (15-20 lines)

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 Universidad Nacional de Moreno
Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III
Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

Why Finland now leads the world in nuclear waste storage

Other nations hope to learn from approval of the world’s first deep repository for spent nuclear fuel.

• Elizabeth Gibney
02 December 2015
5 Article tools

Rights & Permissions

Posiva Oy

Researchers working at a test facility for storing spent nuclear fuel on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland.

10 Nuclear-power plants have been around since the 1950s, and provide around 11% of the world’s electricity. But
the spent nuclear fuel that they produce is highly radioactive and there are no facilities that can permanently and
safely store it.

Last month, Finland’s government became the first to approve construction of such a store — a deep
underground repository — after more than 30 years of efforts to find a suitable site.

15 Nature examines how Finland did it, and which countries are likely to follow suit.

1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A €3-billion (US$3.2-billion) facility on Olkiluoto, an island off Finland’s west coast, will start storing waste in
a deep underground repository from about 2023. It will pack up to 6,500 tonnes of uranium into copper
canisters. The canisters will be lodged into a network of tunnels cut out of granite bedrock 400 metres
20 underground; the canisters will be packed in with clay. Once the facility is sealed — which Finnish authorities
estimate will be in 2120 — it should safely isolate the waste for several hundred thousand years. By then, its
radiation levels will be harmless.

2) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 Universidad Nacional de Moreno
Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III
Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

Most nations store it above ground in temporary storage facilities: either in canisters, or within pools or vaults
25 lined with concrete and steel. There are deep underground repositories — the first were created in 1959 — but
they do not handle high-level radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel.

In the 1960s, Russia injected high-level liquid waste into natural rock formations, but not into purpose-built
facilities.

3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

30 The main problem is agreeing on where to put a repository. The United States, which has the largest number of
nuclear-power stations in the world, selected a site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada in 1987, and has invested $15
billion in it. But Nevada politicians are opposed to the plans, and the White House said in 2010 that it wanted to
scrap the idea. Today the plans are in limbo.

Governments in Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada have declared plans to build deep geological
35 repositories, but have yet to begin the thorny process of picking sites, meaning that these facilities wouldn't
open until the 2040s at the earliest. In Germany, salt formations at Gorleben in the north were studied for
decades before the government called off the work in 2000. In 2013, a new search for a disposal site began.

4) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nuclear-power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) picked Olkiluoto — which already hosted a nuclear-
40 power facility — as one of five potential sites in 1987. The local council that serves the island was initially
firmly opposed to the proposals, says Matti Kojo, a social scientist at Finland's University of Tampere. Only
after the company pushed the financial benefits of hosting the facility — including tax revenues and a municipal
compensation package — and improved their community-engagement programme, did councillors change their
minds, he says. By 1999, when nuclear management firm Posiva (which took over from TVO) came to finalize
45 its site selection, the council for Olkiluoto had effectively volunteered itself for the job.

According to Cherry Tweed, chief scientific adviser at Radioactive Waste Management (a firm in Didcot, UK,
which handles the UK's effort to create a deep geological repository), Finland’s case shows that two elements
are crucial to getting approval for permanent storage: “One is a safe site. The other is a supportive community
who will work together with the developer to shape the project,” she says.

50 5) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of them have. Sweden has already used a similar engagement process, and its government is currently
considering a licence to build a facility using the same technology. Last month the Swedish Radiation Safety
Authority gave its formal backing to building a repository at the chosen site, in Forsmark, and a final decision is
expected around 2017.

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 Universidad Nacional de Moreno
Departamento Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnología INGLÉS III
Licenciatura en Gestión Ambiental - Licenciatura en Biotecnología Prof. Garabito María Florencia

55 Following previous aborted attempts, both the United Kingdom and Canada have opted for a “volunteer first”
policy, which means that communities must put themselves forward to host the site, and would get financial
compensation. But the process will probably require a much greater scale of debate and engagement than did
the Finnish process two decades ago, which occurred in a time and place when the public were relatively
trusting of authorities, says Kojo.

60 6) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tweed thinks so. “One of the questions we’re asked really frequently is, ‘What are other countries doing?’” she
says. “People find that it gives them a lot of confidence to hear that countries in places like Scandinavia, where
we know the people set very high standards of environmental responsibility, have taken this decision.”

Rod Ewing, who chairs the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, agrees. “Sometimes there's discussion
65 in the US that maybe people are just against it. But progress in other countries shows that actually a strong
technical case combined with genuine social engagement might work.”

7) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Besides Sweden, plans in France are also well advanced. The French nuclear-waste agency ANDRA hopes to
70 apply in 2017 for a licence to build a facility in Bure. This would use a different technology designed for clay
rocks, which stores waste by blending it into molten glass.

8) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Countries have considered different ways to get rid of nuclear waste, including firing it into space and trapping
it within Antarctic ice sheets. These have either failed to pass safety criteria, or would have flouted international
75 agreements. Some nations are looking at reactors that can burn reprocessed spent fuel, but these would produce
waste too. Now, most countries agree that permanent burial underground is the best solution, although research
continues into the best ways of doing it.