[en] A previously developed model for the plastic deformation and creep of copper (included as an Appendix to the present report) has been used as the basis for a discussion on the possibility of brittle creep fracture of the copper canister during long term storage of nuclear waste. Reported creep tests on oxygen free (OF) copper have demonstrated that copper can have an extremely low creep ductility. However with the addition of about 50 ppm phosphorus to the copper it appears as if the creep brittleness problem is avoided and that type of copper (OFP) has consequently been chosen as the canister material. It is shown in the report that the experiments performed on OFP copper does not exclude the possibility of creep brittleness of OFP copper in the very long term. The plasticity and creep model has been used to estimate creep life under conditions of intergranular creep cracking according to a model formulated by Cocks and Ashby. The estimated life times widely exceed the design life of the canister. However the observations of creep brittleness in OF copper indicate that the Cocks-Ashby model probably does not apply to the OF copper. Thus additional calculations have been done with the plasticity and creep model in order to estimate stress as a function of time for the probably most severe loading case of the canister with regard to creep failure, an earth quake shear. Despite the fact that the stress in the canister will remain at the 100 MPa level for thousands of years after an earth quake the low temperature, about 50 deg C or less, will make the solid state diffusion process assumed to control the brittle cracking process, too slow to lead to any significant brittle creep cracking in the canister