6 May (NucNet): Germany’s commission on the storage of high-level radioactive waste (Kommission Lagerung hoch radioaktiver Abfallstoffe) has made significant progress in its work, but concerns about the time frame expected for site selection and construction of a final repository need to be addressed, the president of the German Atomic Forum said.
Ralf Güldner told the Annual Meeting on Nuclear Technology in Berlin that the commission must “take on its responsibility to develop suggestions on how to accelerate the selection procedure [for a final repository] and further steps”.
German parliamentarians must approve a final repository by 2031 at the latest. The 33-member commission has until 2016 to establish the scientific criteria for the search for the repository.
Mr Güldner said one of the most important goals of the disposal of radioactive waste is not to burden future generations. But he said this goal cannot be met with a process that might last for 150 years.
Mr Güldner has previously called for a “robust consensus” on the development of the former Schacht Konrad iron ore mine in Lower Saxony, northern Germany, as a nationwide repository for low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste, and also for efforts to find a deep geologic repository site for high-level radioactive waste.
The Gorleben salt dome, also in Lower Saxony, has been under investigation as a potential final repository site.
A moratorium on the evaluation of Gorleben was introduced in 2000 by the former Social Democrat and Green Party administration, but ended in 2010 and exploration was restarted. Work at the site was discontinued again at the end of 2012 to allow for a political compromise on site selection and then ended after the Site Selection Act came into force in July 2013. The law says the site has to be kept open, but secured, and that Gorleben will not be excluded from the new site selection process.
Nuclear utilities in Germany are responsible for interim storage until a repository is built. Operators are required to ensure local interim storage facilities are built to reduce transport to existing central interim storage sites at Gorleben and Ahaus, in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany.
Mr Güldner also said Germany, which is phasing out nuclear energy, faces the challenge of maintaining its expertise in nuclear research and training.
It will be difficult for Germany to be at the cutting edge of nuclear safety if it does not have its own nuclear industry, he said. He welcomed promises by the government that Germany would maintain its nuclear R&D capabilities.
In May 2011, Germany’s ruling coalition government agreed a date of 2022 for the final shutdown of the last of the country’s 17 commercial nuclear reactor units with eight reactors shut down immediately.
