In May 1998, regulators at Germany’s Ministry of Environment and Nuclear Safety learned that for more than a decade they had been kept in the dark about the radioactive contamination that nuclear power plant personnel routinely found on equipment—the casks and rail cars—used to move spent fuel from 20 German power reactors to reprocessing plants in France and Britain.

The level of contamination did not pose a health hazard, regulators concluded. But the government was embarrassed and angry that utility companies had never reported it to safety authorities in Bonn, and in response the ministry slapped an indefinite ban on all shipments of spent fuel and high-level reprocessing waste. After the Social Democrats and Greens took power at the end of 1998, the utilities were forced, in part by the contamination scandal, to agree to the Greens’ long-sought phase-out of nuclear power by about 2030.

The transport ban was finally lifted this spring. But its ghost will continue to haunt the German nuclear industry’s efforts to come to grips with a mountain of plutonium. For nearly two years, no spent fuel had been moved from any German power reactor site. Until the transport ban, about 80 shipments were carried out each year—mostly of spent fuel sent to reprocessing plants in France and Britain.

Until the contamination was revealed, these frequent and routine shipments attracted little notice. Environmentalists critical of nuclear energy didn’t seem to care—the spent fuel was leaving the country. “Their attitude seemed to be ‘good riddance,’” said Klaus Janberg, until this year the director of GNS mbH, a German vendor of transport and dry storage equipment.

Some Germans did care, however, about spent fuel being shipped from reactors to interim dry storage sites in Ahaus and Gorleben, in the north of the country. On four occasions since 1995, the most recent in late March, utility companies shipped by rail a few casks of nuclear material to these facilities.

Each time, the shipments were greeted with massive demonstrations, organized by a fiercely dedicated local opposition group near Gorleben. The fringe of the protests included armed anarchists and, lately, thuggish neo-Nazis. At Gorleben, battles with thousands of riot police have become routine, and law enforcement agencies say the number of violent agitators has grown with each transport. In June 2000, utility companies and the new government agreed to work together to end shipments to Gorleben and Ahaus and instead set up dry storage facilities at each of Germany’s 15 reactor sites.

With spent fuel piling up at those reactor sites, the new government was able to apply the transport ban like thumbscrews, forcing utility bosses to negotiate—and last year finally to agree to—a phase-out of nuclear power. If spent fuel could not be moved off site, German law would require that reactors with filled ponds be shut down, one by one, beginning this year. According to one negotiator at E.ON Energie AG, Germany’s biggest nuclear power generator, “In the end the bottom line was that we agreed to fix lifetimes for each of the reactors if they guaranteed not to choke us on our spent fuel.”

An end to reprocessing

The other force at work is growing public opposition to the plutonium fuel cycle. A side agreement, negotiated together with the timetable for shutting down German power reactors, calls for a permanent ban on shipments of spent fuel to France and Britain after July 1, 2005. That date is timed to coincide with the expected completion of the on-site spent fuel dry storage facilities now being licensed.

The deal will put an end to the country’s 25-year-old policy on reprocessing spent fuel. To the architects of the phase-out, pulling the plug on the “plutonium economy” was a primary goal and a major achievement.

During the 1970s, Germany fiercely resisted U.S. pressure to join it in mandating the once-through nuclear fuel cycle based on geological disposal of spent fuel. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt argued that the then-current OPEC oil crisis taught the lesson that plutonium was a valuable resource.

When Germany’s Nuclear Energy Law was amended in 1974 to mandate that plutonium be recycled, Germany was already a pioneer in the development of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. Soon after the oil crisis, it began to implement plans to use MOX, primarily in a line of breeder reactors, the first of which, the SNR-300, was under construction at Kalkar.

In 1991, however, Germany finally abandoned efforts to license the SNR-300 and put off plans for the fast reactors it had counted on to absorb a large share of the country’s separated plutonium. Germany also gave up on plans to build its own commercial-scale reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf. Instead, German utilities signed additional reprocessing contracts with France’s Cogema and British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), and shipped more and more of their spent fuel abroad. Without breeders, a mountain of plutonium loomed just over the horizon.

During the last 10 years, an initially experimental program to burn MOX in power reactors was gradually expanded. German utilities have contracted for the reprocessing of nearly 7,000 metric tons of spent fuel. This includes 1,127 metric tons covered by so-called “new” contracts signed in 1989 with Cogema, which call for spent fuel to be reprocessed upon demand, and 302 metric tons covered by “new” contracts signed with BNFL in 1990. Reprocessing under earlier agreements with Cogema ended in 2000, but reprocessing under earlier agreements with BNFL will not be completed before 2004.

The new contracts with Cogema and BNFL were concluded after the German reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf was abandoned. In 1994, however, German law was changed to allow either reprocessing or geological disposal of spent fuel, and the German utilities renegotiated more favorable terms. According to experts close to the nuclear safety agency who have seen the contracts, the new terms allow German utilities to store spent fuel at the French and British reprocessing facilities for as long as 25 years before making a final decision on whether to reprocess. If they choose not to, the spent fuel will be repatriated to Germany and they will pay storage charges, but will not be subject to an added penalty. These contracts cover spent fuel discharged from German reactors until 2005, with possible extensions through 2015.

The total amount of plutonium in German spent fuel covered by all the reprocessing agreements is about 67 metric tons, of which an estimated 40 tons is fissile plutonium. Disregarding the amount already processed into MOX and shipped back to Germany, there are just about 45 metric tons awaiting a disposal decision by government and industry.

Industry officials say that the deal’s five-year window gives the utilities enough time to send all the spent fuel covered by the BNFL and Cogema contracts to be reprocessed on schedule. But it is not at all clear that the spent fuel will be shipped and reprocessed, and the plutonium returned and recycled.

The economic risk

For more than two decades, most anti-nuclear organizations were united in their determination to halt reprocessing. After 1995, when regulators in the Social-Democrat-and- Green-ruled state of Hesse successfully opposed the licensing of a $500 million, commercial-scale MOX fabrication plant that was more than 90 percent finished, German utility companies began to understand the political risks of their plutonium recycling program. At about the same time, the European Commission began deregulating Europe’s power market, and German utility executives became more sensitive to shareholders’ warnings about management’s fiduciary duties. They began reassessing the costs and benefits of the closed fuel cycle.

Back in 1987, several spent fuel managers at RWE Energie ag presented a paper at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in which they argued that the utilities would be better off if they deferred decisions about reprocessing for 50 years. One of the authors later recalled that they were nearly sacked for challenging Germany’s spent-fuel-policy orthodoxy. But by the time phase-out negotiations heated up in early 2000, another spent-fuel manager concluded, “It’s clear to everybody involved in this exercise that the business of reprocessing doesn’t really have a future. The question then is, do we break it off with a crowbar, or do we coast down to a soft landing?”

The crowbar method has already failed. An effort by the government to cancel the existing reprocessing contracts ended last year after the British and French governments threatened retaliation.

Logistics

Industry sources say that fulfilling the contracts will require moving about 200 cask loads of spent fuel to La Hague and another 200 to Sellafield. According to regulatory officials, between 600 and 700 metric tons of spent fuel are scheduled to be moved to Britain, and about 1,000 metric tons to France.

But shipping the spent fuel to France and Britain presents some daunting challenges. First, Germany tightened transport licensing requirements after the 1998 revelations about surface contamination. Second, foes of nuclear energy in France and Britain may start to organize German-style protests in an attempt to keep German spent fuel away from La Hague and Sellafield. Their consciousness was raised early this year when French judges, interpreting a 1991 national waste law forbidding the indefinite storage of foreign nuclear waste in France, warned that unless Cogema had watertight authorization to reprocess cargoes shipped to La Hague, the materials could not be unloaded.

Meanwhile, German utilities are planning to use up all the plutonium by burning it as MOX in power reactors. Twelve German reactors have been licensed to burn the fuel, and by the end of 1999, about 13 metric tons of fissile plutonium had been burned in 11 reactors. The twelfth reactor has not yet been loaded with MOX.

The utilities have told the nuclear safety agency that they will burn MOX fuel containing 28 metric tons of fissile plutonium by the end of 2011. That amount corresponds very closely to the amount of plutonium contained in the spent fuel under contract with BNFL and Cogema and not yet returned and recycled.

These plans are not without uncertainty. One reactor, Lingen, will not get any plutonium back from abroad until at least 2005. Some reactors counted on to burn MOX have not yet been awarded licenses by the states, or are awaiting licenses to burn larger amounts of MOX in their cores.

German experts add that conflicts may arise out of the diverging business interests of the individual utilities. So far the lion’s share of plutonium has been burned in reactors owned by E.ON Energie. In contrast, none of Hamburgische Electricitaets-Werke AG units has a MOX license. Some plutonium was generated at older reactors that will be shut down before 2011; their plutonium output will have to be swallowed by other reactors, some of which are owned by other utilities.

So far regulators are pressing the utilities to burn as much plutonium as possible in the reactors that produced it. “We don’t want to see a plutonium bazaar springing up here,” one regulator said. But, he added, some plutonium trading among utilities is “inevitable.”

Legal issues

Even if the government accepts a certain amount of plutonium trading, utilities may still face a legal hurdle. Officials currently drafting the phase-out law want to force the utilities to show they have firm contracts with MOX fuel fabricators and that they can use up the material before their reactors are shut down. The draft language of the proposed amendment reads: “Reactor operators are expected to demonstrate that the use of the plutonium, produced from reprocessing, can be guaranteed in their reactors.” Said one regulator, “If utilities don’t have firm MOX contracts, then they can’t ship more spent fuel” to Britain or France. But as one spent fuel manager told me, “We can’t produce contracts for all this plutonium right now.”

Part of the reason they can’t lies in the deep uncertainty about MOX fuel-fabrication capacity. Confidential documents show that until last year, German utilities expected to get back MOX containing 8.5 metric tons of heavy metal (uranium and plutonium) from BNFL’s MOX Demonstration Facility in Sellafield. But after the quality-control scandal about MOX sent from the plant to the Kansai Electric Power Co. in Japan in 1999, BNFL ended the plant’s operations for foreign clients. German utilities also planned on receiving 147.5 metric tons of heavy metal from an aging MOX plant at Dessel, Belgium—more than three times that plant’s maximum annual output.

The biggest question marks concern Cogema. German utilities cannot expect to have their MOX fabricated at the Melox plant at Marcoule because its total capacity is required by Electricité de France. Cogema is pressing the French government to let the plant produce an additional 150 metric tons of heavy metal in MOX a year for foreign clients, arguing that no appreciable engineering modifications would be necessary. But the Green-led Ministry of Environment in Paris won’t cooperate, and no license has yet been awarded. German utilities expect to obtain the largest share of their MOX-262.6 metric tons of heavy metal-from Cogema’s Commox plant at Cadarache. But the MOX will trickle back to Germany, because that plant is currently able to produce only 35 metric tons per year.

German utilities are also planning to have MOX fabricated at BNFL’s just completed Sellafield MOX Plant. But the British government has not authorized the plant’s opening, and it is possible that it may never open.

In the meantime, the German government has said that building down Germany’s foreign plutonium stockpile is a priority. In January, the Federal Ministry of Economics told the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, that this goal must be accomplished before German utilities could even consider getting involved in a scheme floated by the United States to burn plutonium from Russia’s dismantled weapons in their reactors. “Because utilities already have a large stockpile of plutonium from the operation of their reactors that must be recycled, the use of MOX made from weapons plutonium is not foreseen in German reactors,” the ministry said.

That position would not change, the ministry added, even if the Russian side were to sweeten the bargain by offering to lease the MOX and take back the spent fuel. “German policy is based on the principle of national responsibility for nuclear waste” and “precludes the final disposal outside of Germany of any spent fuel burned in German reactors.”

A third way?

Inside the government, debate is still raging over whether utilities should be encouraged to burn plutonium or whether, by employing bureaucratic levers including additional rules and regulations, the government should prod the utilities to consider disposing of as much unreprocessed spent fuel and separated plutonium as possible as waste.

Government regulators who are critical of MOX fuel argue that burning MOX generates still more plutonium, so that the amount of plutonium in a reactor’s core remains constant or increases slightly. Some German critics of MOX have proposed processing the plutonium not into reactor fuel but into unusable “off-spec” MOX assemblies, which would be disposed of as waste. No formal decision has been made by the federal government, experts involved in discussions said in March. But most German industry experts are not enthusiastic about the idea.

Salt-domes are unsuitable as a repository for low- and medium-level radioactive waste, according to members of a German commission which must find storage sites for radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

(555.5322) Herman Damveld - For safety reasons, toxic high-level radioactive waste may not be stored next to low- and medium-level radioactive waste. Therefore two repositories must be found. But how? The Advisory Working Group on Final Storage (Akend), which was created by the German Environment Minister, convened 28 and 29 September on this issue.

Under water

Outside Frankfurt, in the vicinity of the airport and near an eight-lane freeway, lies a hotel with large meeting rooms. While outside the sun is shining, inside the curtains are closed and many lights are on. In this artificial environment, 250 people met to talk about a report from Akend.

What is the problem? In the German State of Lower Saxony lies the Asse salt dome, in which 124,000 drums of low- and medium-level radioactive waste were buried in the period up to 1978. Around 1970 it was also intended that high-level radioactive waste would also be brought there.

Events, however, took a different course. The salt mine has three broad, deep passages going down, the shafts, of which two have already been flooded for some time. The third is also now under threat of inundation. The Morsleben salt dome in former East Germany had a license for the storage of low- and medium-level radioactive waste. This salt dome is under threat of flooding too, and also under threat of collapse (see WISE News Communique 539: "In Brief"). Because of this and other factors, the German government decided in May 2000 to stop dumping radioactive waste in Morsleben.

The most important salt dome in Germany is that of Gorleben. Research has been taking place there since 1977. During the research, it was discovered that the salt dome lay in contact with groundwater. This meant that the salt dome did not meet one of the main criteria for suitability. Nevertheless, the Kohl government pressed ahead with the research, using the argument that there was still a hope for positive results. The current Schroeder government, however, found that Gorleben was unsuitable and decided on 14 June 2000 to provisionally stop the research, which up to that point had cost DM2.2 billion (US$1 billion). The government also decided that there must be one site for storing all the nuclear waste. With this, the plans to store low- and medium-level radioactive waste in the former iron ore mine Schacht Konrad seemed to have been dropped.

Doubts

A definitive radioactive waste repository is therefore not yet available, whereas the amount of nuclear waste keeps increasing as long as nuclear power continues. There is currently 76,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste in temporary storage sites and this amount will increase to 300,000 cubic meters in 2040, according to Akend. The high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants accounts for 99% of all the radioactivity resulting from nuclear applications (power generation, research, hospitals). When asked about this, Heinz Laing from Greenpeace declared that "therefore, continuing with nuclear power is irresponsible and illogical".

State Secretary Rainer Baake from the Environment Ministry hastened to state current government policy: "The government has concluded an agreement with the electricity companies to end the use of nuclear power. Although some people want to stop nuclear power immediately, the agreement is there and the parliament is deciding on the text of the law governing this over the next few weeks. Nuclear power does, however, leave an inheritance. This inheritance, radioactive waste, is here already. It is impossible to escape dealing with this mega-problem. That's why we should make possible a decision-making process that is as transparent as possible. The government's target is to have one final repository available in 2030. The work of Akend will fulfill a central role in this."

Doubts were clearly audible in his voice as the State Secretary said: "Storing nuclear waste is an unsolved problem worldwide. It is a problem for which we do not know if there is a good solution. Therefore we must look for the least bad solution, and even then many questions might remain open."

Absent

The State Secretary and Akend have, however, yet another problem. The very large action groups from the regions of the planned repositories at Gorleben and Konrad do not want to take part in the discussions. The nuclear industry, which would rather stick with the repository projects, is barely represented.

The geologist Professor Klaus Duphorn, member of Akend, defended his working group: "Akend has received its terms of reference from the Environment Minister. Apart from that, we operate independently and we are not peons. It is important that our working group is broadly based, with people from the nuclear industry and environmentalists. We want a dialogue with taxpayers. In the past, the taxpayer had to make do with government decisions in which there was no participation at all. We take the population as our starting point on which we build our decision-making process."

The terms of reference kept coming up in every discussion during the weekend. Frank Musiol from the German Nature Protection Association [Naturschutzbund Deutschland] spoke for many of those present: "I cannot consider the work of Akend seriously as long as the possibility of repositories in Gorleben and Konrad is not rejected. They say they want a new beginning, but in practice they just stick to existing plans. In spite of all the problems that the research at Gorleben has brought to light, this salt dome has not been definitively rejected. And as far as Konrad is concerned, there is not even a moratorium or temporary halt to research. Indeed, shortly a license for waste storage is to be issued. I don't follow this."

In the nuclear phase out agreement of the German government with the electricity utilities it was laid down that research work in the Gorleben salt dome will be suspended for three to 10 years but that the salt dome itself was not cancelled as a possible repository site. For Konrad, the government reached the compromise that it would finish legal procedures for a license but that the industry would promise to give up immediate storage plans (see WISE News Communique 532.5186: "Germany: government and utilities reach agreement on phase out").

Laing of Greenpeace pointed out that the proposed license for Konrad specifies storage space for 600,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste, twice as much as would be created from the existing nuclear power plants. He wondered how that was possible.

After that, a representative of the nuclear industry asked to speak. Wolfgang Hawickhorst has a top position at the Gesellschaft ... Nuklear-Service, a consortium of the nuclear utilities. He expected that "a licence for Konrad will come soon. And then the nuclear industry wants to prepare the repository, so that the first waste drum goes down the shaft in 2010. There is already 100,000 tonnes of radioactive waste packed in drums that meet the specifications for storage in Konrad. And a few hundred million marks have already been spent on research and preparations. The goal of Akend is to make the repository acceptable". This comment caused so much uproar in the conference hall that State Secretary Baake had to react. According to him "a license will indeed be issued shortly, but it will not allow the repository to be prepared right away. Therefore, we are not bringing about any fresh developments." He recognized, though, that the government does not want to give up Gorleben and Konrad "in the interests of money, because otherwise the nuclear industry would make claims for damages."

Two storage sites

A totally new line of approach is the question of gas formation during storage of low- and medium-level radioactive waste. The gas comes about because of the radiation-induced chemical reactions, rust formation in the drums and decomposition of organic components in the waste. Gas formation causes the pressure around and in the drums to rise. Therefore, this waste can best be stored in a medium that is to some extent permeable, argues Akend. But permeability also means that water can more easily penetrate. Containers for high-level radioactive waste must be kept free from corrosion by water. Imagine that nuclear waste is stored in salt. Water plus salt form brine, which attacks the containers: they rust away. Because of this, the Akend working group states its preference for two repositories.

Professor W. Brewitz, member of Akend, works for the Gesellschaft ... Reaktorsicherheit (Society for Reactor Safety) at Braunschweig. He made no secret of his views: "Burying low- and medium-level radioactive waste in salt-domes is counter-productive. That waste is packed in cement and contains enough water to enable gas formation. We already have that problem at the Morsleben repository in the former GDR. For this reason I am against the storage of these kinds of nuclear waste in salt domes or salt layers. Personally, I am in favor of setting up two repositories." In saying this, he made it harder for State Secretary Baake, who repeatedly emphasized that the policy provides for one repository to be established for all types of nuclear waste.

"Voluntariness"

As already noted above, the Akend working group wants a new decision procedure. "Voluntariness" - the principle that local communities should volunteer to host a nuclear waste repository and not have one forced upon them - is to play a major role in this. But how far can voluntariness go? Professor Detlev Ipsen of the University of Kassel is the only member of Akend who is a social scientist; the others are engineers and geologists. Ipsen explained: "Recent research show that 61% of the German people are in favor of stopping the use of nuclear energy. Half of the population considers the storage of nuclear waste an urgent problem. But to the question of whether one is willing to agree to a repository in one's own region, 83% answered no."

And this illustrates the dilemma: "How is it possible to convince a local authority that there are not just disadvantages to nuclear waste? Voluntariness stands at the forefront of Akend. We do not want to force anyone to take part in a discussion, let alone agree to a repository. On the other hand, the government has the task of finding a repository site. What can we do if no-one wants to cooperate?" wondered Ipsen.

The social scientist considered the situation in which three possible sites were found: "Voluntariness doesn't just happen. We must make sure that each local authority gets its own scientific staff, which can look into and answer all the questions that concern local citizens. And how do we do that in simple language? That is not so simple", explained Ipsen.

He referred to the idea of coupling nuclear waste storage to regional economic development. Akend is getting the Institute for Ecological Development in Dresden to perform research on this. Gerd Lintz of this institute said: "It seems as if we want to turn nuclear waste into gold, but let yourself be open to the possibilities. The region must receive money in compensation for the disadvantages of nuclear waste. Don't just give this money away, but link it to an impulse for regional innovation. One can, for example, tie this in with the risks. Why can't one set up an institute in the repository region to study all kinds of risks present in society and to look at the way in which one can deal with conflicts in society? This would bring about research which is useful in itself, and with it an earlier acceptance of storing nuclear waste in a repository."

Father Kruse, a parish priest from the Gorleben region had great difficulties with this: "With the Gorleben repository there was no question of voluntariness. On the contrary, thousands of police officers protected the transports. Why, then, is Gorleben still being maintained as an option?" To this question there was no answer. Perhaps a follow-up meeting of Akend at the end of next year will give more answers.

[Translated from Dutch by WISE Amsterdam.]

Source and contact: Herman Damveld, Selwerderdwarsstraat 18, 9717 GN Groningen, Netherlands
Tel: +31 50 3125612
Email: [email protected]

A recently published German report by Dr. Helmut Hirsch and Wolfgang Neumann discusses the safety of CASTOR transport and storage casks in case of terrorist attacks.

The report Verwundbarkeit von CASTOR-Behälter bei Transport und Lagerung gegenüber terroristischen und kriegerischen Einwerkungen sowie zivilisatorischen Katastrophen (Vulnerability of CASTOR casks in transport and storage to terrorist and military impacts as well as conventional catastrophes; November 2001) mainly focuses on two scenarios: the attack with an armor-piercing weapon and the crash of a commercial aircraft on a storage building.

If a cask were shot at with a modern armor-piercing weapon during transport, the cask wall would be penetrated. The report mentions five modern weapons that can penetrate armor plate 400 to more than 1000 mm, whereas CASTORs have only 440mm walls of cast steel, which is weaker. A percentage of 0.5% of the highly radioactive spent fuel or vitrified waste would be pulverized after the impact along the path of the projectile. In case of vitrified waste, 900 Tera Becquerel of cesium-137 would be released and with spent fuel 430 Tera Becquerel (1 Tera Becquerel is 1012 Becquerel). The release would lead to a radioactive contaminated zone around the place of attack. The contamination would be so severe that entering this zone would be virtually impossible. A cloud of radioactive aerosols would be released, possibly necessitating countermeasures at distances as far as several kilometers.

If a large commercial aircraft crashes on an intermediate storage facility, a fire lasting several hours could result. Large aircraft can contain some tens of thousands liters of kerosene fuel and temperatures in such fires can reach 1000°C for several hours. A CASTOR cask is designed to withstand a fire of 800°C for only 30 minutes. The crash of an airplane on a storage hall would result in the failure of a considerable number of casks. An amount of more than 1000 Tera Becquerel of cesium-137 would leak from the casks and become airborne. Due to the fire, the radioactive substances could spread over a large area. Thousands of square kilometers of land would become contaminated to a degree that renders agricultural use impossible.

A special section in the report deals with the problems arising from the public availability and discussions of sensitive information. The fact that all the technical data used in the report can be accessed by terrorists does not imply that a more restrictive policy towards information is required. According to the authors, "Rather, it should be regarded as an argument against the use of a technology which is, at the same time, hazardous and complex to a large degree, creating a conflict between the necessary societal discussion on the one hand and the protection of society from terrorist attacks on the other".

The report (in German) can be downloaded from: http://www.bund.net/themen/energiepolitik/Studie_CASTORTerror.rtf