The Swedish city of Forsmark could be considered the sister city to Andrews, Texas. There have been no ceremonies, of which I am aware, to mark this great sisterhood, and the mayors have not exchanged keys to their respective cities. Nevertheless, these two cities, across the sea from each other, share common ground. Are they both desert cities? No, we all know Sweden has rain and snow, and greenery. Both oil producing cities? Nope...the area around Andrews is saturated with Texas Tea; Forsmark, not so much.
No, my friends, the great binding cord of sisterhood for these two cities is that they are both being turned into dumping grounds for nuclear waste. In a similar situation to the origin of the Waste Control Specialists facility near Andrews, much of the Swedish population (80 %) is against this facility, BUT, the "leadership" of the community understands the need for this facility as well as the economic boon the facility would bring to Forsmark. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14935527,00.html And, like Waste Control Specialists, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) has researched the selected disposal site for thirty years and (BIG surprise here!) declared the disposal site completely safe for the 100,000 years necessary for radiation to dissipate to less than lethal levels.
SKB plans to build a facility similar to the WCS Andrews facility. The SKB facility will manufacture copper capsules which will then be used to encase the spent nuclear fuel rods. The storage capsule would then be lowered into a pit some 500 meters underground in a large granite formation. This formation is the mechanism by which the surrounding land will be protected from the nuclear waste. SKB assures us that no radiation would be able to leach through the granite barrier because A) the copper capsules will remain in tact for several thousand years, and B) the granite barrier will prevent radiation from deteriorated capsules from passing through to the water tables below the granite. Does this sound similar to a certain company's claims about the WCS Andrews facility? I wonder if the average Swedish citizen feels any safer than residents of Texas living near the WCS facility or anyone who lives along the disposal truck and train routes through Texas?
Of course other scientists dispute the SKB findings: "In our experiments, we saw that corrosion was 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than SKB assumes in its safety analysis," said Peter Szakalos, materials researcher at the Royal Technical University in Stockholm, who conducted the studies. The citizens of Sweden voiced their opposition to the proliferation of nuclear power in the 1980's, and in fact voted to phase out nuclear-powered electricity generating plants. And as usual the politicians (similar to their Texas counterparts) found ways to overturn the public will. Nuclear power grew to the point that over fifty percent of the electricity produced in Sweden came from nuclear energy-powered generation plants.
With the proliferation of nuclear reactors comes the proliferation of nuclear waste. With the proliferation of nuclear waste comes the inevitable problem of waste disposal. And in steps SKB with its "final solution" which consists of bringing all the nuclear waste in Sweden to Forsmark for "safe disposal." Here I would like to insert a tidbit from history that will cost the reader nothing: Hitler called his plan for Jews "the final solution." It is a little unsettling that SKB borrowed Hitler's term for human holocaust and applied it to what could someday become another kind of holocaust.
So, Andrews has a sister city in Sweden, but not for any good reasons. Like the Andrews WCS site, the Forsmark SKB site has been declared "safe," and like the Andrews site, independent scientists have declared the SKB site to be unsafe. Both studies are backed with scientific "proof." And most unfortunately, the will of the people of Sweden was ignored by political leaders, just as occurred in Texas. It can be a great thing to have a "sister city." In this case, not so much.
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