BI-Luechow Dannenberg

In 1977 the Gorleben saltdome was assigned as the location for the disposal of German high-level radioactive waste. The mine, planned to be used as a disposal site for high-level radioactive waste in a saltdome at Gorleben, is about half finished. Until now, 1.3 billion Euro is spent. It will take a few decades more before the first waste-container can be stored, unless the whole project is skipped due to ungoing scientific and popular opposition.

At 840 meters below surface there is a large space with nets under the ceiling to prevent pieces of salt from falling down. There are two shafts 400 meters from eachother. Between both shafts a system of horizontal galleries (7,5 meter wide and 5 meter high) is constructed to allow natural air circulation. It is 37 degrees Celcius and there are measuring apparatus in side-walls, floor and ceiling to measure the convergence: the movement of salt. In 3,5 years (2002-2005) the convergence was 60 centimeters. Therefore employees have to scrape the galleries to keep them at the necessary height.

In 2005 Joachim Kutowski (head of the Department Geology Gorleben of the DBE -the German Company for Contruction and Operation of Final Waste Disposal) pointed out that saltdomes are not very suitable for retrievable storage of radioactive waste, because in time the galleries will silt up. Furthermore the radioactive waste produces heat and the containers can sink away in warmer salt layers and it would then not be easy to locate them if necessary for retrieval. The highest point of the saltdome is 250 meters below the surface level.

During construction the DBE located several carnallite-layers (hydrated potassium-magnesium-chloride) which had to be sidestepped. Therefor the actual disposal will, according to Kutowski, be at a different location at the dome than originally foreseen. Because the high level waste produces heat, the casks have to be stored 50 meters from each other. Given the amount of waste, twice as much space is needed as available now. From the galleries and shafts holes have to be digged out to store the waste in.

One of the reasons for the opposition to believe the saltdome is not suitable is that it is not even meeting its own standards: there should be a layer of impermeable clay over the saltdome, but it is missing for a few square kilometers. So the question is why Gorleben was chosen in the first place? Kutowski states that the decision to see Gorleben as the prime location might not have been taken on just geological grounds but also for political reasons: unemployment, located near the East-German border (but after the reunification in 1990 is was suddenly located in the heart of Germany) Kutowski said in 2005: “So there was no pile of scientific evidence in favor of Gorleben. It was about finding a suitable location, not the best available one”.

This was again confirmed in April this year when it was revealed that in de mid 1980s government geologists were bullied by top government officials to change their findings regarding the suitability of the Gorleben location.

This has been revealed by Professor Helmut Röthemeyer, pensioned former department head of the Federal Physics Technology Agency (PTB), which examined the salt deposit at Gorleben in the mid-80s. The PTB commissioned deep drilling of the salt dome and because of what they revealed it advised against using the salt as a final nuclear repository. The testdrillings hadn’t delivered the hoped-for findings. It was discovered that in the Ice Age a groove was made by a runnel (a small stream) through the stone covering the salt making the stone “unable to hold back contaminations from the biosphere over time”.

When a meeting was called with another federal agency to discuss the findings and the recommendation to explore other sites, Röthemeyer explaines, unexpectedly representatives of the federal chancellor’s [prime minister’s] office, the research and technology ministry and the interior ministry also attended. (There was no environment ministry until after the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine.) The ministry officials demanded that the PTB change its findings. "There was nothing in writing,” Röthemeyer told the newspaper, “there was no written order, but we clearly had to take that conversation as an order.”

The group fighting nuclear waste dumping at Gorleben says they’ve twice demanded the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), which succeeded the PTB, to hand them records of the position taken by the PTB or to at least see them. “The irrelevant criteria for the 1977choice of location paired with this wrong course setting in the mid-80s led nuclear waste disposal into the next dead end,” says the group’s media spokesman, Wolfgang Ehmke on April 19, 2009.

In the 2000 Phase-out law, a 10-year moratorium was declared to give the then SPD/Green coalition time to renew the search for another site. Very little happened afterwards.

In September last year a damning report about nuclear waste leaking from the Asse II storage facility in Lower Saxony became known. The report said nearly 130,000 barrels of low- to medium-grade nuclear waste had been mishandled and warned that groundwater leaking from the mine was radioactive. Environment minister Gabriel said Asse-II was "the most problematic nuclear facility in Europe" -- in part because the mine stood in danger of collapse. The Asse scandal (Asse II is geologically similar to Gorleben) could derail the plans of the CDU/CSU to start drilling again at Gorleben as soon as possible in order to show the population that progress was being made on the issue of storage and to postpone the planned phaseout of nuclear power.

Sources: Press release, BI Luchow-Dannenberg, 19 April 2009 / Der Spiegel online, 4 September 2008 / Nuclear Monitor 625, 8 April 2005

Good news from the highest administrative court in Germany: The country's two oldest nuclear power stations are not allowed to extend their operation. Anti-nuclear groups are likely to rejoice. This decision makes it even more likely that all nuclear power stations in Germany will stop operation in a bit more than a decade, as in the corresponding law.

The ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig concerns the power stations at Brunsbüttel, about 90 kilometers from Hamburg at the mouth of the Elbe River, and Biblis A, about 60 kilometers from Frankfurt. Hamburg is Germany's second-largest city with about 1.7 million people, Frankfurt its fourth-largest with 650,000.

Block A in Biblis was the first nuclear power plant in the then West Germany, starting operation in 1961. Brunsbüttel started up in 1976. Both nukes have a history of mishaps, including near-meltdown at Brunsbüttel. Biblis has the dubious reputation of being a "junkyard reactor" because of the frequency of its breakdowns.

The Leipzig judgment, handed down on 26 March, 2009, confirmed those of lower courts and rejected complaints by the power companies operating the plants. The owners wanted to achieve longer running times by transferring the remaining output quota of another station to these two.

There is tension in the fractious coalition government of conservatives and social democrats over a past government's law (the 2000 Phase-out law) to close down all German nuclear power production in about ten years. According to the German Ministry of the Environment (BMU), Biblis A has some 180 operational days to go ('Restlaufzeit').

Because Brunsbüttel is out of operation since an accident in July 2007 the closure, originally planned spring 2009, is now set far beyond the September general elections (actually 2012). Neckarwestheim-I will likely be the next one to be closed and has some 320 operational days left. According to the phase-out law, the last of the 17 nuclear power plants has to shut down in 2022. (See table)

The power industry is lobbying hard to have the law overturned and is backed in this by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative. Nuclear power will be an important issue in the coming national elections late September. On September 5, three weeks before the elections, a nation-wide antinuclear demonstration is planned in Berlin. The demonstration is also to commemorate the 'Tractor-treck' 30 years ago, when farmers from the Wendland-region traveled to Hannover (the capital of Lower Saxony) to protest the plans for a reprocessing plant, a nuclear fuel plant, an interim storage and a final disposal-facility at Gorleben. In Hannover, five days later, 100,000 people joined the farmers in one of the largest anti-nuclear demonstrations in Germany.

Source: Diet Simon / website BMU: http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/inhalt/43032/4590/

Contact:  BI Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberge.v., Rosenstr. 20, 29439 Lüchow, Germany
Tel: +49 5841 4684
Email: buero@bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Web: www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de

Closure dates German nuclear reactors (January 2009)

Germany's supreme court has handed down a ruling that nuclear opponents welcome as strengthening their rights. The group that has resisted nuclear waste dumping at the north German village of Gorleben for 31 years says the ruling, confirming the right of residents along the waste transport routes to litigate against the transports, is a clear reprimand of lower courts.        

The Lüchow-Dannenberg Civic Initiative for the Environment (BI) sees the ruling "strengthening the cause of the nuclear opponents". For years lower administrative courts had refused complainants along the route to Gorleben the right to challenge transport permits issued under nuclear law.        

The supreme court now ruled in favour of two complainants who argued that their constitutional rights were breached because they were refused access to lower courts since 2003. The BI now contends that the judgment proves that "for years a gigantic police apparatus was used to transport nuclear waste to Gorleben on a questionable legal basis".

"We have always demanded that protection of the population must take priority over protection of purely financial interests of the atomic industry," commented a BI spokesman. Moreover, during the last transport (in November) the radiation minimisation regulation was breached because the casks contained substantially more radioactive material and radiated significantly more.

That was why police leaders gave out the order beforehand that police should stay at least 6.5 metres away from a critical danger zone. "But what about the population, houses and plots along the transport route that are knowingly and directly exposed to the high radiation risk?"

The BI spokesman states that breaches of basic rights are regularly and knowingly committed whenever nuclear waste is transported.

On the agenda of breaches to enforce the transports against the interests of the population are the basic right to life and physical integrity (Art. 2), the right to freedom of assembly (Art. 8), the right to privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunication (Art. 10) and the right to property (Art. 14). And finally, Article 19 assures every citizen: 'Should any person's rights be violated by public authority, he may have recourse to the courts.'

The supreme court said the female plaintiff's right to effective legal protection was violated because the lower court denied her access to appeal in an unacceptable manner. The BI is still waiting for a supreme court ruling on assembly bans along the transport routes.        

In another development, nuclear opponents are furious that the Asse II nuclear dump in an old salt mine that is taking in water, is to be fixed at taxpayers' expense. Some 75% of the radiation of the waste stored in Asse, is coming from nuclear power plants. The companies of those plants -EnBW, Eon, RWE and Vattenfall- are, according to a proposed chance of the German Atomic Law are to be let off the hook. The repairs are to cost billions of euros

Sources:  Diet Simon, email: 30 January 2009 / http://www.ausgestrahlt.de/atom/asse-mail