It has long been clear that the Swiss nuclear waste repository should be located on the German border. Now it is known exactly where the building is to be built: in the Nördlich Lägern region, a few kilometers south of the German municipality of Hohentengen. This was announced by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra) on Saturday.
The waves in Germany have been boiling up for years because the other two places on the shortlist would also have been near the German border. “Switzerland decides to leave its radioactive waste in Switzerland and almost throws it at our neighbors’ feet,” said a local councilor at a meeting in Hohentengen in 2016.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment described Switzerland’s decision for a nuclear waste repository directly on the border with Germany as a burden for the affected communities. The location of the planned site near the border near the Baden-Württemberg town of Hohentengen on the High Rhine “represents a great burden both in the construction phase and in the operation of the repository for this and surrounding communities,” said Christian Kühn, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment and member of the Bundestag from Baden-Württemberg. Württemberg, on Saturday evening in Berlin on request. “I am working with Switzerland to ensure that the good integration of the German neighbors is continued.”
At the same time, Kühn emphasized that it was “right and important” for geology to be the decisive criterion for selecting a repository site. On the one hand, the earthquake probability must be as low as possible, on the other hand, the stone in the subsoil must have certain properties. In Switzerland, only the Opalinus Clay is suitable for storage. These conditions only exist in the border area.
“It is also in our interest that Swiss waste is stored safely,” says Martin Steinebrunner from the German Coordination Office for Swiss Deep Repository (DKST) at the Hochrhein-Lake Constance regional association. “If the safest place is a few kilometers from the border, we’ll accept that. We also have the Swiss nuclear power plants close to the border. It’s a gain in safety when everything is stored.”
The radioactive waste from the nuclear power plants in operation since 1969 and from areas such as medicine, industry and research totals 9,300 cubic meters. In addition, there is around 72,000 cubic meters of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste. The four nuclear power plants that are still in operation may be operated as long as their safety is guaranteed. That may go as far as the 2040s. The material is embedded in uranium oxide or glass and packed in thick-walled steel containers or in drums solidified in cement. The storage tunnels are filled with bentonite or cement mortar. The tunnels are hundreds of meters deep. “The required confinement time is around 200,000 years for high-level waste and around 30,000 years for low-level and intermediate-level waste,” says Nagra.
Nagra intends to submit a planning application by 2024. The government then decides on the approval, and Parliament must approve the resolution. In Switzerland, however, a referendum can be enforced. That would probably not take place before 2031. If the decision is not rejected, then construction begins. The multi-year emplacement would begin around 2050. The camp would then be observed for several decades. Around 2125 it will be finally sealed and the structures on the surface will be dismantled.
Finland will soon start final storage, Germany is still looking for a location
In Germany, the search for a repository is not yet complete, 54 percent of the area is still identified as possible sites, affecting almost all federal states. The decision is expected to be made in 2031, and the camp is also expected to start operations around 2050.
Furthest in Europe is Finland, where emplacement in a repository for nuclear waste under the island of Olkiluoto in south-west Finland is to begin as early as the mid-2020s.