“A disposal site for high-level radioactive waste is what’s most needed in the Philippsburg region so that we know that the highly radioactive legacy of using nuclear power in Germany is safe in the long term,” said Wolfram König, President of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BfE). “The rapid search for the best possible site is a task involving the whole of society.” The BfE is not only the licensing authority for transporting and storing high-level radioactive waste, but is also monitoring the search for a disposal site.

The BfE invited the people of Philippsburg to an information meeting on Wednesday. This focused on the final 26 containers with German radioactive waste after it had been reprocessed in Great Britain and France. The waste owners in Germany are obliged to take back the containers. Five of them are to be stored at Philippsburg. Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW) made an application for the BfE to approve this in September 2017. “This radioactive waste is material that was produced in Germany. It’s our absolute priority to keep it safe until it’s moved for disposal,” said König.

The number of containers already approved for Philippsburg has not been fully used by storing the radioactive waste from reprocessing. The storage site there is authorised for 152 containers of high-level radioactive waste. Even including the containers with intermediate-level radioactive waste from reprocessing, 45 fewer containers will be kept there than originally planned. The approval procedures both for storing and transporting the items are still ongoing. “The BfE can and will only issue a permit for storage once the operator meets the high safety requirements stipulated in the Atomic Energy Act,” says the President of the BfE.

The operators of German nuclear power stations had transported the waste in the form of irradiated fuel rods to France and Great Britain for reprocessing until 2005. This process gives rise to high-level radioactive waste. The waste owners are contractually obliged to take this back. 160 containers were sent abroad for reprocessing from the Philippsburg nuclear power station. This resulted in about 10 containers with high-level radioactive waste, which was transported to the storage site in Gorleben in Lower Saxony until 2011. The final five containers, which are to be stored at Philippsburg, contain intermediate, but not high-level radioactive waste.

Background

The waste owners transported the residual waste from reprocessing to the storage site in Gorleben in Lower Saxony until 2011. About 80 percent of the containers with radioactive waste from reprocessing are still being stored there today. Gorleben is also the only site that has been partially examined to determine whether it is suitable as a disposal site for high-level radioactive waste. This geological investigation was concluded in 2012. The German parliament amended the Atomic Energy Act too when it adopted the Site Selection Act by a large majority in 2013: as a result, the remaining radioactive waste must be kept at the storage sites at the nuclear power stations. The goal was to conduct an open search for a disposal site and not give the impression that a decision had already been made to use Gorleben for this purpose. The German federal government, the states and waste owners agreed in 2015 to provide storage for the radioactive waste at Biblis, Brokdorf, Niederaichbach (Isar nuclear power station) and Philippsburg until a disposal facility is available.