British nuclear power stations are currently filling up with radioactive waste, and as a result "swathes" of the highly dangerous material are set to be "buried in the English countryside", said The Telegraph. For local communities it isn't so much "not in my back yard" as "not under my back yard", said the Financial Times.
Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the "temporary home to the vast majority of the UK's radioactive nuclear waste", said the BBC, "as well as the world's largest stockpile of plutonium". It's stuck there because no long-term, high-level waste facilities have been created to deal with it.
The permanent plan to handle the waste currently at Sellafield is to first build a designated 650ft-deep pit in which to store it. Although the contentious matter of its location has yet to be agreed, the facility will hold some of the 5 million tonnes of waste generated by nuclear power stations over the past seven decades. Then, in the second half of the century, a much deeper geological disposal site will be dug that will hold the UK's "most dangerous waste", such as plutonium, said The Telegraph.
The problem is only going to get bigger because nuclear power is a central part of the government's mission to have "clean power by 2030", and "more nuclear power means more nuclear waste", said the BBC.
Some believe part of that solution will be found overseas. Earlier this year there were warnings that Australia could become a "poison portal" for the UK and US as a result of the three-nation defence pact known as Aukus. The Australian Greens' defence spokesperson David Shoebridge said despite efforts to amend it, the agreement "still allows the US and UK to dump intermediate-level waste, and Australian high-level waste, anywhere in Australia". | 
