In the middle of the French countryside, around 500 metres underground, scientists are getting ready to build the country’s first GDF.
The process there is around 25 years ahead of the UK’s own search for a GDF and Cumbria Crack’s Lucy Edwards was invited to visit the French site to get an idea of what could be in store for Cumbria.
There’s no denying that the idea of having an underground radioactive waste disposal facility in Cumbria has created some controversy and left people divided.
But two locations – south and mid Copeland – are in the running in the county, with only one other site in Lincolnshire in the mix. Allerdale was also considered, but was taken out of the search in September, because its geological features were not suitable.
There’s only so much artist impressions and general information can do to help paint the picture of what a GDF would be like – so we went armed with a camera and some no-nonsense questions about what it would really be like to have one in Cumbria and why we need one at all.
What is a GDF and how safe is it really?
Put simply, a Geological Disposal Facility is an underground site designed to dispose of some of the most dangerous and destructive high-level radioactive waste safely.
Made up of a series of protective vaults and tunnels, a GDF gives the waste a place to be sealed away from humans forever.
To give you a scale, if a GDF was to be built in Cumbria, the facility would be as deep as Scafell Pike is tall and would hold enough waste to fill around two-thirds of Wembley Stadium.
GDFs are widely considered the best available technology for the long-term storage of waste by scientists and are being built across the world.
High-level radioactive waste can take up to 100,000 years to decay and finding a solution for storing it without turning it into a dangerous burden for future generations is a top priority and problem for scientists.
While the waste is currently stored above ground, it is an expensive task and the storage buildings alone cannot last hundreds of thousands of years.
Above ground, the waste is also exposed to environmental factors and changes, meaning there’s an ongoing – and unwanted – inter-generational responsibility to maintain the waste that ultimately puts people at risk.
In 2006 the UK Government formed an independent committee to address where the waste should go and multiple storage and disposal options were considered including sending it into space.
Eventually, scientists agreed that underground storage was currently the safest and smartest option available to humans.
As part of this, Nuclear Waste Services is continuing to undertake a series of studies that aim to help determine the feasibility of locating a GDF off the coast of Copeland.
In France, their GDF – known as Cigeo – is also being built underground, but instead of being beneath the sea, it’s set to be built beneath countryside near the small town of Bure.
The decision was made to go ahead with Cigeo in around 1991 following years of public debates, and consultation.
Over 30 years of research has gone into their GDF, lots of which has taken place in their underground research laboratory or URL, where conditions mimic what a real GDF would be like.
Jacques Delay, head of the science programme at Andra, said: “A lot of people think we can take care of the waste on the surface. That’s not true. It’s impossible to consider that we could take care of all the waste including high-level on the surface.
“We can’t spend hundreds of years monitoring it, we need to ensure passive safety of the waste, it’s in our motto, which is for those who are not born yet, Andra is for you.”
Jacques has worked on the underground research laboratory since 1989, when the site was just agricultural fields.
Over 500 metres down, the lab is accessed via bright red metal elevators and consists of a series of tunnels. The overall lab extends to around 1.4 miles in size.
But it’s not test tubes, Bunsen burners and white coats – it actually feels more comparable to the London Underground’s tunnels with lots of heavy machinery around to test rocks and building methods.
Standing in the main space that is designed to replicate what a real GDF chamber would look like is a strange feeling – it’s a final resting place for radioactive materials from the nuclear industry and a place that eventually humans will never visit again once sealed off.
Jacques added: “From the amount of data and things we have already obtained – I don’t see any other place on the planet where we could dispose of radioactive waste.
“We are sharing the same concerns and challenges as yourselves in the UK and there’s always something to learn from the process.
“Even if we stopped the nuclear industry right now, we would still have to find a way to dispose of the waste and we don’t want to create a burden for future generations.”
Does a GDF have to be built in Cumbria? What if we don’t want it?
The Government is continuing to back nuclear as a green option for energy – so high-level radioactive waste will always need somewhere to go long-term.
We also can’t just send the UK’s radioactive waste to other countries or one giant storage facility, it has to be dealt with here.
But ultimately – a fully willing community that supports the idea of a GDF is required for it to go ahead.
If Cumbria were to decide in favour of a GDF, a test of public support would eventually be held and organised by the local authority in the form of a poll or vote.
Over 20 countries are at different stages of the GDF consultation and development process, and in France, the idea of Cigeo was initially met with fierce opposition.
People including organised groups of anti-nuclear activists strongly disagreed and protested against the idea of a GDF being built, while others welcomed it as an opportunity for development.
Groups including Burestop 55, Bure Zone Libre and EODRA remain against the idea of Cigeo being built and continue to organise actions and demonstrations against the project.
In the heart of Bure, a town near the site for Cigeo, also sits the Maison de la Résistance , a permanent residence where people from Bure Zone Libre come together against Cigeo.
They, along with organisations like Greenpeace, argue that it is impossible to predict if the radiation from the waste will remain contained so far into the future.
Protestors also worry that future generations could forget about the waste and dig it up thinking there was something of value to find in the underground vaults or that radiation could rise to the surface and contaminate the ocean or earth around it.
Those against the idea of Cigeo argue that an overhaul of the current management strategy for radioactive waste is needed instead of the introduction of a GDF.
Despite this, the technology of a GDF remains the favoured method of long-term storage by governments across the world – including in the UK.
For Damien Theriott, mayor and councillor at the Departmental Council of Haute-Marne, the promise of major development in the area was enough to be in favour of Cigeo.
He said: “There is always a few who don’t agree but now, Cigeo has been generally quite accepted. People are conscious that it should provide development and we need this because industry is low here.
“As far as I’m concerned it’s more important to have jobs for our people as we need work. We are hoping the development will bring workers from Paris, we need 2,000 people to work there once building starts.
“But we have to take care of the waste and there are not many solutions, it’s our national responsibility and it’s benefiting our economy at the same time.”
Damien added that many of the towns and villages surrounding Cigeo’s proposed build site are areas where industry is primarily focused on agriculture with an aging population – creating a great need for an economic boost.
As a result of the Cigeo project, a territorial development plan was agreed to and signed by France’s Prime Minister.
It has promised the development of housing, infrastructure, transport, health, equipment and services, agriculture and heritage, economic support and employment for the wider area.
Here in Cumbria, Nuclear Waste Services anticipate similar investments and economic boosts for the host site of the GDF as well as a ‘long standing’ employment pipeline for local people.
South Copeland’s community partnership is also commissioning its own independent report exploring the wider impacts on future generations, which is due to be published in 2024.
No other community partnership has decided to do the same yet in the UK and the data will not inform the development of Mid Copeland or Theddlethorpe’s community vision as each area is different.
Negative implications for the economy such as a drop in house prices are also being investigated as part of this and a potential compensation scheme is being actively drawn up.
Once the independent impact report is published, South Copeland’s community partnerships is aiming to work with the GDF builders to develop a local vision based on what kind of investment people want to see if a GDF were to be built here.
So, what’s in it for us? Will it create jobs?
If a GDF were to go ahead, Nuclear Waste Services expect around 4,000 jobs to be created in its first 25 years of operation.
Around 80 per cent of those jobs would be skill levels up to A-level – but the idea of building the facility must first go through a 15-year consultation stage and, if approved, construction is earmarked to start in the 2050s.
While that sounds like a long time, a GDF would remain sealed away underground in Cumbria for hundreds of thousands of years, so a consultation has to be thorough.
It’s really difficult to wrap your head around how long 100,000 years actually is – 100,000 years ago humans were a completely different species to us now and were still living in caves as hunter gatherers in the Paleolithic period.
Now try and imagine what humans 100,000 years into the future might be like, they could be entirely different to us. It’s such a long period of time that scientists working on the GDF have to factor in how an ice age might impact the facility.
Professor Neil Hyatt, head scientific adviser for Nuclear Waste Services, said: “We’re committed to drawing out workforce from the local area but it’s likely that this generation’s children would be the first wave. It’s truly a multi-generational project.
“But the great thing about the GDF is it’s for the community to decide if it’s part of their vision. If it all comes together then that’s great, but it’s for the public to decide.
“The social licence for us to operate depends on us being a good neighbour and my job is to be the internal sceptic, so I have to believe strongly that we’re thinking with people in mind.”
Around £2 million a year is also being pumped into Cumbria by the two community partnerships in South and Mid Copeland through community investment funding, which aims to give the area economic boosts while it is investigated as a potential site.
This money would increase to around £2.5 million a year per community if the areas’s reach ‘borehole stage’ where boreholes are drilled into the rock so scientists can explore the site suitability further.
These partnerships are made up of members including the GDF developer, the local authority and people from the area and aim to educate the community on the possibility of hosting a GDF.
Isn’t it just a dump for radioactive waste?
While it is technically waste disposal – a GDF is not comparable to a landfill site for household waste.
The task of creating a GDF is a huge operation, involving experts from a variety of fields including geologists, engineers and nuclear scientists.
The waste isn’t just being thrown in a hole in the earth and left – there’s an immense amount of engineering behind it that aims to keep radioactivity from leaking into the GDF’s surroundings and there’s actually a lot of safety restrictions experts have to follow.
Neil said: “It’s just not a dump, the modern stores for this waste we currently have at Sellafield are highly engineered, there’s so much expertise behind it all.
“We’ve got 60 years of research behind us because it has been done before in other countries which helps demonstrate evidence that it’s safe – it just works on simple storage principles.
“We do understand the idea of radioactive waste can invoke an emotional response sometimes, it can be difficult to understand.
“Disposing of high-level radioactive waste is truly a national challenge and all of us are engaged in this. We need to show each other respect and provide the space for evidence to be presented and considered.
“It’s not our job to sell this facility, we want people who are unsure about it to challenge us to do better, to keep asking us questions and encourage us to provide better answers.
“A lot of us involved are environmentally conscious and we do believe it’s the best environmentally safe method for storage.”
Here comes the science bit…
So we’ve all just watched Whitehaven harbour turn orange from an unknown source of pollution – what’s to stop a GDF causing the same problem?
According to Neil, the chance of a GDF ‘leaking’ radioactivity into the ocean is so slim that it’s close to impossible.
Sites selected for a potential GDF are chosen at the outset for being geologically safe and far away from any historic mine workings or drinking water supplies, so as not to disturb them.
The containers holding the waste and the overall facility will also be sealed away using multiple protective barriers helping to protect both humans and the surrounding environment.
Neil said: “We’re not relying on one safety system, there would be multiple barriers in place so that should one fail the others can take over.
“We also think very conservatively and we’re always erring on the side of caution with our predictions of container corrosion rates. It’s all regulated to a very stringent level.
“Nuclear waste is nothing like what people expect, it’s expertly packaged to start with and highly engineered so it’s encased in protection.
“There’s also a lot of defence in the depth a GDF would be created in. Fluids, gas and ground water move extremely slowly within the Triassic rock that is present at the Copeland sites so in the extremely rare chance radiation were to ‘leak’ it would be stuck in the rock.
“But it is such a small level of risk because of all the safety layers in place and it is incredibly small in comparison to the land risks of managing radioactive waste.
“Our risk guidance level also has to be less than one in a million chance that someone in the future could have a fraction of their annual radiation exposure from being close to the GDF.”
Once sealed off, a GDF would eventually require no interaction from humans whatsoever. Because of this, scientists do not have plans for methods of retrieving the waste or specific waste containers long-term.
Neil added that the Environment Agency is also required to ensure a GDF complies with environmental regulation and that the Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management regularly reviews GDF technology as a way of making sure it’s still the best option.
He said the scientists involved have to account for over 4,000 generations of people and as part of that, they also have to account for how a potential Ice Age might impact storage.
In a way, he says, they’re like Time Lords from Doctor Who – their work to figure out how to store waste safely has them thinking about ways to protect humanity across a vast expanse of time.
Because the GDF will exist for such a long period of time there are also challenges of how we communicate with future generations to tell them not to accidentally or intentionally dig up the facilities.
Language and society progresses so rapidly that pictures or other methods of simple communication have to be considered as ways to ward people off from the danger.
But figuring out a way to safely store waste long-term also doesn’t just benefit the nuclear industry – it also benefits the medical sector, universities and research facilities where radioactive waste is created.
While a GDF would primarily store high-level radioactive waste, some lower-level waste coming from places such as hospitals and universities could also be stored there with other sites such as Drigg’s Low Level Waste Repository taking on the bulk of the lower-level waste.
He added: “It’s our responsibility to manage radioactive waste and not pass the burden on to future generations.
“Creating a GDF deep in stable rock that’s remained stable for millions of years means that radioactive waste that takes 100,000 to decay is able to do so for a very long time safely without it being a burden.
“It should work for millions of years and nobody will go into it and interfere with it because no maintenance is required. Its evolution is predictable, and we can be confident in its safety in that long time frame.
“But we really believe that however you cut the radioactive waste cake, it has got to be a GDF cake.”
What now?
On January 24 2025, the UK Government said it had decided to retain separated plutonium at the Sellafield site.
The NDA says the next phase will be to seek approval for a major programme on plutonium disposition, ‘requiring a nuclear material processing plant and interim storage capability to be built at Sellafield, bringing major investment to the area and supporting thousands of skilled jobs for decades’ – a GDF.
Here’s what we know so far
Prior to the decision, we carried out a deep dive into what the situation was with a GDF – and where Cumbria had got to in the plans.
