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German nuclear waste disposal disputes
Diet Simon - 23.04.2005 19:49
Activists are marking the 10th anniversary of resistance to nuclear waste being carted to Gorleben, a village in northern Germany. – A high-temperature thorium reactor in Hamm shut down in 1989 is costing five million euros a year. – The government majority in the German parliament has rejected a move by the conservative opposition to start using a leaking, abandoned iron ore mine in Salzgitter, north Germany, as a final nuclear dump.
German nuclear power stations
Press release 22 April 05
Gorleben: 10 years of Castor transports
Last nuclear waste transport to plutonium factory
It’s been 10 years since the first convoy carrying highly radioactive waste rolled into Gorleben in Lower Saxony. For the activist group Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg (BI), which is preparing an artistic function to commemorate the 19th anniversary of Chernobyl, it was a “raven-black day” day after 13 years of successful prevention of storage through the courts.
On 25 April 1995, a day before the ninth anniversary of the Chernobyl reactor meltdown, the transports rolled through the front gate to the interim storage hall at 5.12 p.m.. Earlier, police and paramilitary border guards used water cannon, helicopters and dog squads to move thousands of people out of the way; they had used lots of imagination to try to stop the convoy. The people in the Wendland region have had to suffer the nine largest police deployments in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Yet the disposal quandary remains unsolved. Instead, the deadly radioactive waste lands in an interim storage hall with the safety standard of a potato barn. The nuclear industry operators of the above-ground hall refer to it as merely a protection against the weather. Despite this, more Castor transports are to roll, thereby manifesting as the site of final storage the Gorleben underground salt deposit that has been in dispute for 28 years.
A spokesman of the BI accuses: "Our constitutionally guaranteed rights to physical integrity [Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity], freedom to demonstrate [All Germans shall have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed without prior notification or permission.] and informational self-determination are invalidated by the deployment of gigantic police contingents for the financial interests of the nuclear industry. Demonstration ban zones more than 70 kilometres long between Lüneburg and Dannenberg further cement this intolerable condition that flies in the face of a democratically constituted society.”
The BI has information that on Tuesday evening (26 April), the Chernobyl anniversary, the last Castor transport is to leave the shut down nuclear station at Stade for the French plutonium factory at La Hague for recycling. There will be a demonstration at 6 p.m. at the Harburg Rathaus S-Bahn rail station and a warning vigil at 8 p.m. at Bahnhof Buchholz, as well as other protests against nuclear waste transportation to France. "The recycling heavily pollutes the environment through chimney and ocean discharges,” charges a BI spokesman. " As it is processed in the plutonium factory, the German nuclear waste delivered will for years to come radioactively pollute the north of Normandy.”
The Gorleben BI also sees an explosive legal situation after transportation to the plutonium factories stops. Legislation on the operation of nuclear power stations has so far demanded proof of waste disposal either by dangerous recycling or the so-called “direct final storage”.
But there is no final storage facility into which waste could be stored directly. The BI slams as scandalous that apparently the risky storage in light-construction halls is now to be declared as direct final storage. "There is no safe final storage for highly radioactive waste anywhere in the world although nuclear waste has been produced for 60 years. Carting it into radiating ‘potato barns’ cannot seriously be claimed as proof of disposal,” the BI spokesman argues.
Francis Althoff, phone #49 (0)5843 986789
Expensive standstill
Maintenance operation of the shut down Hamm-Uentrop nuclear power station costs five million euros a year. Local activists will hold a warning vigil on the Chernobyl anniversary.
HAMM · Tuesday is the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl reactor disaster. The Hamm Citizens Initiative for Environmental protection (Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Hamm) is marking the occasion to hold a warning vigil at 5 p.m. that day in front of the shut down nuclear reactor at Uentrop. The thorium-high temperature reactor 300 (THTR) was shut down in 1989, no power has come from the plant since 1997. Yet the reactor is still causing costs. In a letter to the Bürgerinitiative the finance ministry of North-Rhine Westphalia state puts the "costs of maintenance operation of the secure lock-in” at about 5.1 million euros a year (nearly 14,000 euros a day).
In addition to the operation of the lock-in, the sum covers the cost of storing fuel and advance payments for a final solution (demolition).
"Going by old state budgets we had assumed annual costs of 3.034 million euros for the so-called maintenance operation. These figures have to be revised clearly upwards,” Horst Blume comments on the figure given by the ministry. Blume has headed the activist group for 30 years. On Tuesday he will report on “HTR export from Germany to everywhere in the world” at 7 p.m. in the Fuge-Laden on Widumstrasse.
Under a contract valid until 2009, the federation and the state share the costs. The so-called final storage advance payments – which the ministry put at 500 000 euros for 2003 – are split equally between the federation, the state and the company responsible for the construction and maintenance of the secure lock-in of the THTR 300, Hochtemperatur-Kernkraftwerk GmbH (HKG).
Blume also received an answer to his question how much the reactor has cost since the decision to close it down in September 1989 to the end of last year: 391.8 million euros. These are split into federation 112.1 million, state 131.0 millions and the equity holders of the HGK 148.7 million. "Funding for the phase following 2009 will be agreed in good time between the federation, state and HKG,” says the letter from the ministry. The federation and the state had a "great interest in the equity owners of the HKG and the electricity industry carrying the highest possible share of the costs generated in future by the shut down THTR," the letter says.
The "secure lock-in" in Uentrop is licensed until 2027. The North-Rhine Westphalian ministry for transport, energy and planning wrote in another letter that by 2030 “according to several statements by the federation” there is to be a final storage facility in Germany. Until then the shut down reactor will remain the way it is. The energy ministry told the activists that it sees “no need for any decision in the foreseeable by the state government about continuation of the licensed secure lock-in or the further dissembly of the THTR plant, for which an available final storage would be an efficient measure.”
No fast-track expansion of former iron mine
BERLIN. The dispute about plans to turn Schacht Konrad, a former iron ore mine near Salzgitter, into a final storage for nuclear waste, is sharpening. The conservative CDU-CSU opposition parties failed with a parliamentary motion to start storage as soon as possible, the Greens accused the Lower Saxony state government of refusing a final storage solution.
Greens deputy Marianne Tritz said in the Bundestag that Lower Saxony was making a lot of noise about Schacht Konrad, but didn’t follow up its words with deeds. Although litigation papers against the planning procedure for Konrad had been filed a year and a half ago, there had been no response yet from the state government. "Anyone refusing a solution of the final storage problem like this should be careful about accusing others of procrastination,” said Tritz.
The CDU/CSU had initiated the debate. It accused the federal government of procrastination in the nuclear disposal policy and demanded a change of course. Instead of the current single-storage strategy – which would rule out Schacht Konrad – two final storages should again be planned, they demanded. To that end, the exploration of the Gorleben salt deposit should resume. Schacht Konrad should be expanded without further delay to take in medium and low radioactive wastes, as soon as a first-instance court judgement was passed in the cuirrent cases.
The CDU energy expert, Kurt-Dieter Grill, said "The disposal policy of the government is expensive, senseless, wrong and offloads the responsibility on coming generations.” The government parties rejected the motion and declared that it would stay with the single-storage concept. It again kept open the time schedule for further procedures.
Wilhelm Schmidt, Social Democrat deputy from Salzgitter, said, “Resistance against Schacht Konrad will continue.” One of the issues, he said, was location interests of the region. Schmidt also demanded a serious danger analysis for the former salt mine Asse II near Wolfenbüttel. There needed to be a check, he said, whether the 1,300 containing medium radioactive waste could stay in the former mine.
Anti-nuclear activists allege that for years eleven cubic metres of brine have been seeping into the Asse II pit every day, endangering the barrels. If the radioactive waste comes into contact with water or the brine, the barrels would rust, they argue, allowing radioactivity to enter the ground water.
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