“Shouldn’t last decades”
SPD and Greens are speeding up the search for a repository
04/14/2023 12:21 p.m
The era of nuclear power in Germany ends on Saturday. But that doesn’t mean the end of the nuclear power debate. Because now the rubble after dismantling and the remaining radioactive waste has to be disposed of somewhere. An unpopular task that no one has volunteered for so far.
Before the shutdown of the last three German nuclear power plants on Saturday, the SPD and the Greens are pushing for more speed in the search for a repository for nuclear waste. “The period must be tangible and manageable for people and must therefore not last decades,” said the environmental policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Carsten Träger, the “Welt”. The chairman of the Committee for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, the Green politician Harald Ebner, also said that the goal of bringing the highly radioactive nuclear waste underground as quickly and as safely as possible should not be lost sight of. Nevertheless, “thoroughness before speed” applies.
The amount of highly radioactive waste from fuel elements alone is estimated at around 10,500 tons in Germany. There is not yet a repository in Germany. Originally, a repository should be found by 2031. Last November, the Federal Environment Ministry announced that the search would be delayed. The Federal Agency for Disposal (BGE) intends to submit a proposal to limit the search to specific regions by the second half of 2027.
The environmental policy spokeswoman for the coalition partner FDP, Judith Skudelny, considers delays in the search to be “not a problem in the matter”. “But it was a communicative debacle and unsettled the population that the completely arbitrary and objectively unjustified year 2031 was held up as the date for determining a location, although it was clear to everyone that this date could not be met.”
Looking for a place for rubble
Meanwhile, the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) warns of insufficient capacities for the disposal of construction waste from nuclear power plants. A VKU spokesman told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that medium to long-term bottlenecks were emerging in some places. In order to prevent this, the federal states would have to prove that there is sufficient space in the landfills for a period of “at least ten years”.
Landfills repeatedly refused to accept the so-called cleared and therefore harmless building rubble. “In many places, landfill operators have to realize that the local population does not accept the disposal of cleared waste from nuclear power plant dismantling,” said the VKU spokesman for the newspaper. However, there is no risk of radiation protection from landfilling.
The association therefore advocates jointly coordinated public relations work between the federal, state and local governments in order to take away “unjustified fears” from residents near the responsible landfills.