The fact that civilian and military uses of nuclear energy are two sides of the same coin is often denied. At the same time, the unresolved socio-environmental problems – from decommissioning to final disposal – are increasingly suppressed, thus sabotaging possible changes for the better in our world. How can movements for environmental justice and anti-war initiatives join forces and expand existing alliances? What can they learn from one another? How can ‘anti-nuclear’ once again become a common denominator for peace activists and environmentalists, up to and including post-colonial challenges, who want to face and practice international solidarity? In her contribution to the text series “Pluriverse of Peace” Ursula Schönberger presents different perspectives.
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The debate about a return to nuclear power in Germany has regained momentum, spurred on by the traditionally pro-nuclear International Energy Agency, which predicts a global expansion of nuclear power. The debate is accompanied by increasing calls for Germany to arm itself with nuclear weapons. The protagonists give the impression that their imagination ends where they have to consider the failure of a potential deterrent effect: millions of deaths, long-term radiation of entire regions, health consequences for future generations.
What is striking is the complete lack of reality in the pro-nuclear debate: independence from raw material imports, cheap energy production, solved waste problem. The reality is different: In the case of uranium, there would be 100 percent dependence on raw material imports. While birch wood is on the sanctions list against Russia, you will look in vain for uranium. On the contrary, Russian uranium is enriched in Gronau, North Rhine-Westphalia, and fuel elements are to be produced in Lingen, Lower Saxony, in a joint venture between the French company Framatome and the Russian company Rosatom. Despite Germany’s nuclear phase-out, both plants will continue to produce for the international market indefinitely.
The cost debate was aptly summed up by cabaret artists shortly before the German federal elections with their Söder Challenge campaign. However, it is not only construction and operation that are associated with enormous costs. In 2017, the energy industry paid a one-time sum of 24.1 billion euros into the newly established Fund for the Financing of Nuclear Waste Disposal, thereby buying itself out of all further financial obligations for interim and final storage. In addition, there are projects that must be financed by the public sector: the cleanup of Wismut, which will cost about 9 billion euros; the decommissioning of the research centers, which will cost about 1.9 billion euros; the decommissioning of the Greifswald and Rheinsberg nuclear power plants, which will cost at least 7.5 billion euros; the decommissioning of the Morsleben repository, which will cost about 3 billion euros; and the cleanup of ASSE II alone, which will cost about 4.7 billion euros. Cost increases are foreseeable.
Solutions from the hand of a magic fairy
What was reported in the press in February – that nuclear waste can be rendered harmless by a transmutation plant – sounds like a solution from the hand of a fairy godmother. In fact, the idea of such a transmutation plant is a combination of a particle accelerator, a reprocessing plant and a nuclear reactor. However, if transmutation were ever technically feasible, it could only convert some of the highly radioactive waste into shorter-lived radionuclides. The rest would still have to be stored in deep geological repositories, and the amount of low- and intermediate-level waste would actually increase.
We must not close our eyes to the real problems: 65 years of nuclear energy use in Germany have left thousands of rusting barrels of nuclear waste, 1,900 containers of high-level waste, unlicensed interim storage facilities, and final storage facilities in a catastrophic state.
At the end of October 2024, I, together with anti-nuclear organizations, presented for the first time a complete overview of nuclear waste storage in Germany: “Nuclear Waste. An Inventory for the Federal Republic of Germany – Concern Report of the Nuclear Waste Report.” The 468-page report documents where nuclear waste has been and is being produced, where it is stored, and what safety problems exist. This would be the original task of the federal government and the nuclear supervisory authority. Unfortunately, it is symptomatic that this overview had to be presented by environmental associations, anti-nuclear organizations and citizens’ initiatives, because those responsible only act when they are either forced to do so by massive protests and media reports, or when the problems are so obvious that they can no longer be ignored.
Dismantling of all nuclear power plants has begun
After the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down on April 15, 2023, all reactors now have a decommissioning license and the dismantling of all plants has begun. It will take many more years. So far, only three of the 36 reactors have been dismantled to the extent that they are exempt from the Atomic Energy Act: the experimental nuclear power plant in Kahl, the superheated steam reactor in Großwelzheim, and the Niederaichbach nuclear power plant. The Würgassen nuclear power plant and the Gundremmingen A nuclear power plant continue to be used for waste treatment and interim storage, respectively.
Other focal points in the decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear facilities are the research centers where, in addition to research reactors, new reactor lines were developed and operated, such as the high-temperature reactor in Jülich or the fast breeder reactor and reprocessing plant in Karlsruhe. Dresden-Rossendorf was home to the world’s third largest commercial isotope production facility. Mostly unnoticed by nuclear regulators and the public, serious accidents occurred at the research centers, often only discovered years later. What remains are components, waste and effluent systems with high levels of contamination and radionuclide compositions, the storage of which poses particular problems. Decontamination, dismantling and remediation of the sites are proving to be much more protracted and costly than expected.
Construction sites interim storage
Even if the reactors are dismantled over the years, the local load remains. In addition to a few centralized interim storage facilities, there are also interim storage facilities for spent fuel next to the power reactors. With the dismantling of the spent fuel pools at the nuclear power plants, it will no longer be possible to unload, repair or replace leaking casks. The spent fuel storage facilities in Jülich and Brunsbüttel have been operated for years without a license, only on the basis of government orders. After the Higher Administrative Court of Schleswig-Holstein revoked the operating license of the Brunsbüttel storage facility for failure to provide evidence of protection against terrorism, the Atomic Energy Act was amended to the effect that in future there will simply be no possibility of legal action in similar cases.
The licenses expire after 40 years of operation, i.e. long before a possible deep geological repository. Jülich and Brunsbüttel are warning examples that things can continue unchanged even without an operating license. Only considerable public intervention could ensure that the necessary safety requirements for long-term interim storage are actually implemented and that the state does not continue to perpetuate its ‘pragmatic solutions.’ For this reason, the Nuclear Waste Report and its advisory board presented a demands paper with political, regulatory and safety requirements for interim storage at an expert conference on June 23, 2023.
Interim storage facilities for low and intermediate level radioactive waste exist or are under construction at almost all dismantling sites. In many older interim storage facilities, there is no directional air flow for the discharge of radioactive substances, no ventilation via measuring and filter equipment, and no air conditioning to prevent corrosion. The oldest interim storage facility dates from 1964 and is located on the site of the Karlsruhe Research Center and, like all the others, was not designed for long-term interim storage. Nevertheless, many casks have been there for decades. In the old interim storage facilities, the containers were simply stored from back to front, with no aisles and no way to visually check the condition of each container.
Blind spot uranium
The consideration of nuclear waste in Germany has a blind spot: the vast majority of nuclear waste produced in connection with the use of nuclear energy remains in the countries where uranium is mined, in dumps or in radioactive sludge pools, with the corresponding ecological consequences.
The uranium mining areas of Wismut AG and, since 1954, of SDAG Wismut (Sowjetisch-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft Wismut) in Thuringia and Saxony, which between 1946 and 1990 became the fourth largest uranium producer in the world – this ‘nuclear heritage’ is hardly noticed in the context of the nuclear waste debate in Germany, because as a relic of another state and another time it is not part of the social debate. Apart from the immense effort required to restore the old mines, dumps, and tailings ponds to a state of at least temporary ecological stability, the radioactive dumps and tailings ponds are being used as near-surface repositories for radioactive waste without a plan approval procedure, without a long-term safety certificate, and without public participation.
After the Nuclear Waste Report addressed this complaint in 2013, the German government responded to a parliamentary inquiry in 2013: Since the GDR Radiation Protection Act continues to apply to the remediation of the Wismut sites, “… the stored scrap metal is not radioactive waste in the sense of the Atomic Energy Act.” Today’s handling of the Wismut contaminated sites is a lesson that should be carefully considered at all sites where nuclear waste is stored and in the continued search for sites for deep geological repositories.
Countering nuclear fallout
The civilian and military uses of nuclear energy are two sides of the same coin. French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit to the Le Creusot nuclear power plant in 2020: “Without civilian nuclear energy, there is no military use of the technology – and without military use, there is no civilian nuclear energy.” Anyone who frivolously calls for nuclear armament today should bear in mind that the problems of disposal, i.e. the final storage of fissile material from nuclear weapons, are just as unsolved as in the civilian sector. In addition, nuclear weapons testing – and the socio-ecological problems associated with it – are preferably externalized. Who wants to know that the Global South is mutating into a test laboratory for ‘our’ nuclear armament?
In October 2024, the Nuclear Waste Report will be organizing a symposium on “Nuclear Fallout” to explore these issues in greater depth and to address the social impacts on the Global South in particular. The latter is particularly important because, in a post-colonial world, the contamination of natural life-support systems by nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining, and nuclear waste storage all too often goes unnoticed and is ignored as acceptable collateral damage.
This article makes it clear that the problem of nuclear waste cannot be delegated to some place in the future, but has long been an acute problem everywhere. And it makes palpable that everyone is already directly affected. The article therefore provides an opportunity to reflect on the dangers of nuclear waste, which are literally close at hand, and to develop our own requirements for dealing with it. Ultimately, it shows that the only way to deal with the problems responsibly is to get involved.