MANCHESTER, England — While Germany is looking at extending interim storage of national nuclear waste by as much as 80 years, allowing interim to become permanent storage is not an option.
That’s according to German engineer Holger Volzke, who spoke here Wednesday at the conclusion of the 2016 Nuclear Decommissioning Conference Europe. Volzke is a division manager at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, a scientific and technical organization under the direction of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy.
“Infinite storage is not an option,” Volzke said. “(The direction) is to develop a geological repository as soon as possible, so that’s the very basic political statement. … Interim storage is just an interim solution, as long as necessary, but it’s not a final solution.”
Germany currently houses about 1,000 loaded casks of spent fuel and high-level waste across 12 on-site interim storage sites and three central interim storage locations. The first cask loading campaign from interim to permanent storage is expected in 2050, and the last run is expected by 2080, though Volzke described those estimates as optimistic.
German law requires that site selection for the national repository be completed by 2031, and Volzke said an optimistic timeline for operations to begin is 2050. That means Germany’s interim storage will have to be extended well beyond the 2035 date set to move the fuel into permanent storage. Volzke said the prospect of long-term extension for the spent fuel casks is the result of abrupt political policy shifts, most notably the 2011 response to that year’s triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
Until March 2011, Germany generated about 25 percent of its electricity from 17 nuclear reactors, according to the World Nuclear Association. The country immediately shut down eight nuclear power plants following the Fukushima disaster, and set closure dates for the other nine by 2022. The government a year later stopped exploration of the Gorleben salt dome, which was set to become the country’s national repository and remains in the running for the 2031 decision.
The original concept, Volzke said, was for nuclear waste to be kept in interim storage for 40 years starting in 1995. Because of the shift in policy direction, he said that timeline could be extended by 30 to 80 years.
One of the issues Germany faces is updating cask-specific safety requirements, which Volzke said are currently highly generalized. They will need to be defined before transportation can begin for permanent storage. The licensing process will also come with complications. Though the decision is technically an extension, the storage facilities will require new licenses in order to keep the material on-site.
In announcing Germany’s nuclear phase-out in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “”We have the chance to be the world’s first industrialized nation to switch over to the electricity of the future,” adding that Fukushima changed her attitude on nuclear energy policy.
Germany Passes Law Mandating ‘Big Four’ Cover Decommissioning Costs
Germany on Wednesday adopted regulations meant to ensure that the country’s four major nuclear energy utilities shoulder €23.3 billion ($26 billion) in national nuclear decommissioning costs.
German economic affairs minister Sigmar Gabriel announced the adoption of a regulation intended to hold the utilities accountable even if they break up into separate entities. Germany’s “big four” utilities were put on notice in April, when a 19-member commission recommended that E.ON, RWE, EnBW, and Vattenfall shoulder liabilities associated with decommissioning.
Wednesday’s statement describes language that mandates a “secondary liability” for any company split-offs.
“Any splits after (April 2016) are covered by the proposed regulation,” the statement said. “A reliance on the continued existence of the current law is so far no longer protected.”
