nuclear waste
Head of the Federal Office: Site for nuclear waste repository by 2046
Containers with high-level radioactive waste and transport hoods are in the interim nuclear storage facility. photo
© Sina Schuldt/dpa
After the shutdown of the German nuclear reactors, the problems and dangers of nuclear energy are far from over. This shows the sluggish search for a repository. First calls for more speed are loud.
The search for a repository for the highly radioactive According to the President of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), Wolfram König, nuclear waste must be completed by 2046. “2046, i.e. the time that the Federal Agency for EndRepository (BGE) assumes to be the fastest time, we now have to take as a benchmark. That’s what we have to check everything in the process,” said König of the German Press Agency in Munich. Further delays must be avoided.
“Safety is paramount, but when it comes to radioactive waste, safety is not isolated from time. If the issue is postponed too far, then time itself becomes a safety factor,” he stressed. It is therefore important to have a realistic but at the same time ambitious timetable.
König pointed out that 2046 already means a delay of 15 years to the original time plan. “I don’t think it’s justifiable that we simply accept that it will be well into this century before we even have a location, which of course still has to be built,” he emphasized. After that, 20 years have to be reckoned with for planning, construction and approval, and storage has to be operated for 30 to 40 years.
Last November it became known that the target date of setting a location by 2031 could not be met. Instead, the BGE calculates in the best case with the year 2046, another scenario even envisages a time corridor up to 2068.
The BGE must now see where there is potential for acceleration in the process, said König. It is necessary to “be honest” in the debate. He believes that there are control options, if necessary “fundamentally readjusted”. He sees the BGE, his authority and the Federal Environment Ministry as having a duty to “sit down and analyze what worked well, what didn’t work so well and where you might have to go back to the previous standards”.
According to König, the complicated search for a repository shows that Germany has taken a path with nuclear power without having thought through all the consequences to the end. “And we are there to ensure that this is not forgotten and that progress is made there.” Ultimately, the nuclear phase-out is only complete when the radioactive waste is safely locked away underground and future generations no longer have to deal with it.
After the nuclear phase-out, at least no new nuclear waste will be added. “But what has remained and what remains is: how can we ensure the security for an infinite time that these highly toxic, highly dangerous substances do not get into the environment.” Now it is a question of finding the best possible location in Germany, far away from the former combat zones, according to scientific standards.
Search for a repository
Ultimately, an endlessly drawn-out search for a repository is also a safety issue. The castor containers, in which the nuclear waste is currently stored in the interim storage facilities, do not have unlimited approval. And each of the casks contains a radioactive inventory comparable to what was released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
“The current safety standards must also apply to long-term interim storage, so that people and the environment are reliably protected from the dangers of radioactive residues,” says König. It must therefore be checked in good time whether and what interactions there are on waste and containers in the case of significantly longer interim storage. At the same time, the time until disposal must be kept as short as possible. It is also important from an economic point of view to speed up the process, otherwise a lot of money would flow out of the repository fund into the interim storage facility.
For the future, he hopes that the search for a location will take place without the losers debate that is typical for Germany, said König. “It’s different in other countries. People even apply for this location.” Perhaps there will be an opportunity in this country through the generation change: “I think younger people, new people will perhaps also take a more sober approach, especially given that we no longer run around with this meta-discussion pro and contra nuclear energy.”