A leaked government report in Germany says the country has more than twice as much radioactive waste to deal with than indicated in previous reports.
The new estimate is 600,000 cubic meters, more than twice the 298,000 cubic meter figure previously made public.
The federal government is negotiating with various federal states for waste management solutions, using a draft proposal called the “National Disposal Plan,” which has the figures made public by the newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung.
The new figure includes 100,000 cubic meters – about 13,000 tons – of waste produced by a uranium enrichment facility in Gronau in North Rhine-Westphalia, near the Dutch border, The Local reported.
This uranium cache was not counted earlier, because it is made up of uranium tails that can be processed into fuel. As such, it had yet to be labeled waste.
An additional 200,000 cubic meters of low- and medium-level waste was stored in the Asse II shaft of a former salt mine in Wolfenbuttel in Lower Saxony.
Germany is on track to close its 17 nuclear power plants by 2022. If the shutdowns become permanent, that, in effect, will make Germany a testing ground for how plants should be decommissioned, whether from age or political whim. The price tag for the additional waste burden was not reported.
The Asse II shaft, for example, stored 126,000 drums of radioFactive waste at a depth of 750 meters or nearly a half mile deep. These must be placed in new containers due to damage to the original containers caused by groundwater that seeped into the shaft.
At the Brunsbuttel Nuclear Power Plant site, decommissioned in 2011 and managed by energy company Vattenfall, 102 out of 335 barrels of stored waste were corroded to the point that some were leaking. Some barrels were so damaged they were judged too dangerous to move.
For Germany, this is not necessarily a recipe for disaster. Around the world, 200 nuclear power plants are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2040. Germany might end up with a pivotal role in that, which may include some big contracts for companies that can shepherd the decommissioning process.