​May is the busiest month for Visitor Centre

At the end of May, the Environmental Responsibility Team of the Tampere University of Technology had the opportunity to visit Olkiluoto. The group consisted of nine people, both first-timers and those who had visited Olkiluoto before. They did not have any specific expectations; the visit was organised out of pure interest.

– We all come with open minds, hoping to get information and learn something new. After all, it is not every day that you get to visit a place like this. You could call it an engineer's curiosity, said Markku Leppänen, who is the Safety Engineer at the University.

Summertime is busy

The increase in the number of excursions by school classes before the start of the summer holiday is directly reflected in the level of hustle and bustle at the Visitor Centre in Olkiluoto. According to Information Officer Merja Heinonen, May is the busiest month every year.

In addition to the pre-arranged visits, the Visitor Centre is kept busy by the summer Wednesday events that start in June: they give everybody an opportunity to attend a guided presentation of Olkiluoto.

– Our largest visitor groups consist of school children and students, various clubs and associations, as well as groups of co-workers from the same workplace. Foreign experts and media, on the other hand, are more interested in the Olkiluoto 3 project and the activities of Posiva, Ms. Heinonen explains.

Site tour the highlight

According to Merja, Olkiluoto attracts visitors from all over Finland; the visitor group from the longest distance that she has guided came from Sodankylä in Lapland. The Information Officer says that a lot of positive feedback has been received from people.

– Sometimes we hear that a visitor comes to Olkiluoto with a negative opinion about nuclear power, but leaves with a changed attitude. People say they get the kind of information here that has not been available e.g. in the media, concludes Ms. Heinonen.

Heinonen defines the site tour, the operating waste repository and the exhibition at the Visitor Centre as the highlights of the visits.

– The opportunity to actually get an idea of the whole site from a bus appears to be important to people. The visit to the operating waste repository is another important attraction: what people see and experience in the so-called cave repository certainly helps to increase their trust in our operation.

Commended for expertise

The visitors from the Tampere University of Technology were also toured on the site and taken to the operating waste repository. The Environmental Responsibility Team found both of these interesting and the Team was of a very positive frame of mind at the end of their visit.

– It was great to see this place and get a concrete idea of it after everything one has read in the papers. I came with an open mind to learn and indeed I did get a lot of new information, said Ms. Kati Mökkönen, who works as a special lab technician at the University.

The environmental specialist of the University, Ms. Sannamari Hellman agreed and commended the guide for expertise.

– The visit has been really rewarding and we got answers to all our questions; many thanks to our guide for that. For me, the highlight of the visit was the operating waste repository, Ms. Hellman summed up her visit.

For Sannamari Hellman from the Tampere University of Technology, the highlight of the visit was the ONKALO exhibition at the operating waste repository.