To be sure, these figures are valid: Through the operation of nuclear power plants in Germany, around 28,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive nuclear waste have accumulated. This corresponds to 10,500 tons of heavy metal, which have been packed or will be packed in about 1,900 Castor containers. The highly active waste consists of the spent fuel elements from the plants as well as residues from reprocessing melted into glass. Although the highly radioactive parts make up only about 5 to 10 percent of the total volume of all radioactive waste in the Federal Republic, they contain more than 99 percent of the radioactivity.
Currently this nuclear waste is stored in 16 interim storage facilities. 13 of these facilities are located at the sites of decommissioned nuclear power plants. The remaining three — Gorleben in Lower Saxony, Ahaus in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — are so-called central interim storage facilities. They take the radioactive waste from various power plants. Where and when the highly radioactive nuclear waste will be stored permanently is completely unclear.
On 26 April 1986, the catastrophe occurred in the Ukrainian city of Tschornobyl, then part of the Soviet Union (Russian: Tschernobyl). A radioactive cloud contaminated large parts of Europe. Forty years later, looks back in a focus section and looks ahead. In Ukrainian place names, generally uses the spelling in the local language, not the Russian one — as with Tschornobyl.
With the search for a final repository, the Federal Company for Disposal of Nuclear Waste (BGE) based in Peine, 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. As possible host rocks come into consideration salt domes, clay and granite formations. In recent years, the BGE has already excluded large areas from further search and most recently described about a quarter of Germany’s area as potentially suitable.
The salt dome in Gorleben, long studied for decades as the only site, was already excluded from the process in 2020 — due to geological defects that critics had repeatedly pointed out even earlier: The rock above the salt dome does not have sufficient thickness to reliably prevent the leakage of radioactivity over the required period of one million years. There are also indications that groundwater could interact with the salt dome — and thus with the stored waste.
By 2031 the site should be determined
The site selection law, adopted in 2013 and amended in 2017, specifies that the site for the final repository must be found and named by 2031. According to information, a draft proposed for another amendment in the Federal Ministry for the Environment is circulating, in which this target date is struck. However, the indication that the site search will take significantly longer has been evident for some time. In several expert reports and statements, a decision is discussed for the 2050s, 2060s or even 2070s. Until a final repository is built and filled after a site is named, many more decades will pass.
With its unresolved nuclear waste problems, Germany is not alone. Currently there is globally no operating final repository for civilian highly radioactive waste. The only operating final repository for highly radioactive waste is the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, USA, which is used solely for military waste. However, several repositories for civilian nuclear waste are in construction or planning stages.
What does it look like elsewhere?
The most advanced is the Finnish repository Onkalo. In the cavern at a depth of about 500 meters in the granite rock, test operations have been running since 2024. The emplacement of the first spent fuel rods is expected to begin later this year. The repository is planned to be used into the 2120s and then permanently closed.
Zheleznogorsk in Siberia was long considered a “forbidden city” because it is said to have handled highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. An underground laboratory is under construction to verify the suitability of the surrounding gneiss rock for a possible later disposal of highly radioactive waste.
France and Switzerland are not as far along. In France, the final repository for high- and medium-level radioactive waste is planned near Bure in the Grand Est region. The waste is expected to be stored in a clay layer approximately 160 million years old at a depth of about 500 meters. Construction is planned for 2027 or 2028.
In Switzerland, the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra) has proposed the site north of Lägern in the cantons of Zurich and Aargau near the border with Germany for a combined final repository. The emplacement of high-, medium-, and low-radioactive waste in underground clay formations is planned to start here no earlier than 2050.
Evelyn Hartwell
