Seven Castor casks with highly radioactive waste may be stored in the Bavarian Isar interim storage facility. The Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) has issued a corresponding permit for the waste from the reprocessing of German fuel elements in France and Great Britain, the BGZ Gesellschaft für Zwischenspeicherung announced on Wednesday. This confirms that the containers can be safely stored in Lower Bavaria. However, a date for the transport of the Castor containers from the north-west of England to Niederaichbach has not yet been set. Approval for the transport has already been applied for, but has not yet been granted.
The fact that the containers are brought to Bavaria is due to a concept adopted in 2015 for the distribution of radioactive waste that is still stored abroad. At that time, in addition to the Isar interim storage facility, Biblis in Hesse, Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein and Philippsburg in Baden-Württemberg were also specified as destinations for the return transport. The distribution is based on the polluter pays principle, said a BGZ spokesman. Almost as much material was taken abroad for reprocessing from Bavarian nuclear power plants as from Lower Saxony. While 108 Castor containers have already been brought to the Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility in Lower Saxony, not a single one has so far been transported to the Free State.