UAE's first nuclear power plant at Barakah close to Saudi border is expected to be ready soon by end of 2017. This will then produce a quarter of the energy needs in UAE. The U-235 and other isotopes take years to cool to be able to process them and another 1,000 years for the resulting radioactivity to decay.

During the 1940s, the United States and Britain dumped radioactive waste into the ocean. Other countries joined the program, which was only outlawed internationally in 1994. During the 1970s, NASA considered the possibility of using rockets to send the concentrated high level waste (HLW) into deep space.

The idea failed on worry should the rockets packed with nuclear waste misfire mid-way and spreading the HLW. Since then, many ideas for disposing nuclear waste have proved economically or technically unfeasible. So world's nuclear waste is left in huge water-filled pools or concrete casks, waiting for someone to come up with a better idea.

In a conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, a new technique, developed by Swedish engineers and known as KBS-3 was discussed. It involves taking the HLW out of the pools once it's cooled off, encasing it in metal canisters and putting them in clay-filled tunnels about 500m underground. The canisters are 25-tonne monsters made from 5cm-thick copper with cast-iron inserts. The clay is bentonite, which swells and self-seals when exposed to water but also cushions the canisters against any movement. The tunnels are carved out of solid granite bedrock.

In the US, during the 1970s it thought it had identified the perfect site: Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, 150km from Las Vegas. But the plan quickly ran into huge public and political pressure, and ended up being abandoned in 2009.

Deep below the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant on the west coast of Finland, a massive access tunnel carved out of granite has been commissioned more than 10 years ago. Sweden is now planning a similar project, and other countries across Europe are following this with keen interest. Once operational, the four Barakah reactors will produce about 100 tonnes of spent fuel annually, and it will be years before a decision on its long-term fate is needed.

The UAE has presented its plans for managing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste to participants at a meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency Headquarters, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria. The UAE delegation gave the presentation as a contracting party to the joint convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management and outlined the regulatory framework.

The UAE delegation reiterated its commitment to meeting the highest safety standards in its nuclear power program, so it is essential that the nation takes full advantage of critical international collaborative efforts.