The facility, named "Onkalo" (meaning "small cave" or "cavity")[8] is being built in the granite bedrock at the Olkiluoto site, about five kilometers from the power plants.
The facility's constructions plans are divided into four phases:[citation needed] Once in operation, the disposal process will involve placing twelve fuel assemblies into a boron steel canister and enclosing it in a copper capsule.
[17] This was refuted when SKB undertook follow-up studies, which indicated that the alleged corrosion process does not exist, and that the initial experiments were not correctly executed and/or the wrong conclusions were drawn.
The fissile Plutonium-239 content could contribute to humanity's conversion to clean and reliable energy into the future, and burying it in permanent sealed storage would limit that potential.
[21] Danish director Michael Madsen has co-written and directed a feature-length documentary Into Eternity (2010) where the initial phase of the excavation is featured and experts interviewed.
[22][23] American anthropologist Vincent Ialenti has written a book Deep Time Reckoning (2020) that explores how Onkalo repository "safety case" experts envisioned distant future ecosystems and reflected on the limits of human knowledge.
American singer and songwriter Emperor X used a sketch of the facility as the album art for the related song "10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Resettlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories".