Siting nuclear power plants underground: Old idea, new circumstances

摘要

The Idea of siting nuclear power plants underground needs to be revisited. Underground siting provides a means to collocate several reactors, along with spent fuel storage and repository facilities, and create underground nuclear parks. Such underground nuclear parks could produce baseload quantities of electricity and hydrogen that could be supplied to the nation through a transcontinental grid. increased margins of safety, security, and proliferation-resistance, as well as improved waste management approaches, could be realized through underground siting. Moreover, underground nuclear parks might be economically competitive with those sited on the surface if built at a suitable geographic location and deep inside a suitable rock unit, such as a massive salt deposit. Greater environmental equity could result because the community that would benefit economically from the park's generation of electricity would be the same community that would accept the nuclear waste generated by the park's reactors.