One year of nuclear phase-out: many tasks remain for nuclear waste disposal

Source: BASE

Germany's nuclear phase-out will mark its first anniversary on 15 April 2024. With the shutdown of the last three remaining nuclear power plants, Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2, the commercial use of nuclear energy had come to an end one year before.

The President of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), Christian Kühn, commented: "The nuclear phase-out has put an end to the production of high-level radioactive waste. An estimated 27,000 cubic metres of high-level radioactive waste will remain following decades of nuclear energy use. Given this final figure, a deep geological repository can - and must - now be sought."

Unlike many other countries, Germany has established a legally regulated, science-based and transparent site selection procedure, and secured it financially by means of a fund that nuclear power plant operators had to pay into. This confidence-building process could be jeopardised if the nuclear phase-out and the globally recognised necessity of deep geological disposal were called into question against better judgement.

"Germany has become safer thanks to the nuclear phase-out. At the same time, the small number of reactors that have already been completely dismantled shows the complexity of dismantling, interim storage and final disposal. Nuclear safety must therefore be guaranteed for many decades to come, and remains an ongoing task," says BASE President Kühn.

Nuclear phase-out decided back in 2011

The decision to phase out nuclear energy is the result of a 2011 Bundestag resolution, which was passed shortly after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, and was based on a broad, crossparty majority. This was also the first time that both supporters and oppo-nents of nuclear power joined forces in the search for a repository site for high-level radioactive waste.

"The search for a repository site is a mammoth project that can only succeed if it is supported by a large part of society. Claims about other and supposedly simpler options have no technical basis and distract from the fact that a repository in deep geological layers is still the only disposal option for hazardous substances," says Kühn.
Germany and almost all other countries that have such waste con-sider storage in deep and stable formations to be the only long-term safe alternative for dealing with high-level radioactive waste. New or supposedly new reactor technologies also require such long-term safe repositories.