Swiss tunneller Implenia has been chosen to work on Sweden’s first underground repository for nuclear waste.
Svensk Kärnbränslehantering (SKB), the body in charge of disposing spent fuel, awarded the contract.
Implenia announced last week that it had signed an “early contractor involvement” agreement with SKB, and would build the first underground section of the 500m-deep Spent Fuel Repository, which is located near the Forsmark nuclear power plant in the Östhammar municipality in eastern Sweden.
It will plan the project’s phases, design and build an access tunnel to the first storage level, plus three shafts for ventilation and elevators, and transport tunnels.
Planning starts this autumn with the first waste expected by 2033.
Implenia said the value of its contract was “several hundred million Swiss francs”.
SKB chief executive Stefan Engdahl said Implenia had “solid expertise and experience in rock excavation and infrastructure projects”.
The $11bn repository will occupy a 24ha seismically stable site, storing waste in rock that is 1.9 billion years old.
It will be able to hold about 12,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel in 6,000 canisters, placed in more than 60km of tunnels.
The underground space required for this is about 4 sq km.
Implenia has long been Switzerland’s leading company on tough excavation projects. It gained experience on boring transport routes through the granite and gneiss of the Alps. Most recently, it won the Sisikon Tunnel near Lake Lucerne and the Rogfast subsea road tunnel in Norway.
Sweden generates about 40% of its electricity from nuclear sources. Its first generation of reactors are now decommissioned, or will be shortly.
The country had been looking to phase out nuclear power, but in November 2023 the government announced plans to build two large-scale reactors by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 more, including small modular reactors, by 2045.
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