By 2031 a decision should be made about where a final repository for nuclear waste will be established. Now the Ministry of the Environment apparently intends to strike the deadline altogether.
That the search for a site for a final repository for the highly radioactive nuclear waste lasts much longer than initially planned now seems likely to find its way into the corresponding law as well. In a draft bill from the Federal Ministry for the Environment for the revision of the Site Selection Act, the previous target year 2031 would be struck without replacement, Deutschlandfunk reported on Wednesday. The final storage of nuclear waste and the search for a site falls within the remit of the Federal Ministry for the Environment led by Casten Schneider (SPD).
The date 2031 has proven to be unrealistic, according to the report. A legal deadline is not compatible with the requirements of the selection procedure for the best possible site. The draft is, according to its own statements, in the broadcaster’s possession.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment confirmed upon inquiry only that the draft is currently being prepared. The procedure is undergoing internal alignment at the technical level. In the next step, the involvement as well as the consultations within the federal government would take place. Content-wise unfinished drafts would not be commented on further, it was said.
That the site search will take considerably longer had already become apparent two years ago. In several reports and statements, the decision was mentioned only in the 2050s, 2060s or even the 2070s. Before a final repository is built and filled after the designation of a site, further decades will pass.
A Bit of Honesty
The Lüchow-Dannenberg Environmental Protection Citizens’ Initiative (BI) sees in the ministerial admission “a bit of honesty.” “The original target was populist,” said BI spokesperson Wolfgang Ehmke. The public was meant to be led to believe that “the dangerous highly radioactive waste would disappear from the surface as quickly as possible.”
In Germany, a total of around 28,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive nuclear waste accumulate—equivalent to about 10,500 tons of heavy metal in roughly 1,900 Castor containers. It consists mainly of spent fuel elements from nuclear power plants as well as residues from reprocessing. Although the highly radioactive portion accounts for only about 5 to 10 percent of the total volume of all radioactive waste, it contains more than 99 percent of the radioactivity.
With the search for the final repository, the Federal Company for Final Repository Site Selection (BGE), based in Peine in Lower Saxony, is tasked. The repository should lie at least 300 meters underground and be surrounded by a rock layer at least 100 meters thick as a barrier. Possible host rocks include salt domes, clay and granite formations. The BGE had recently still described about a quarter of Germany as potentially suitable.
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