SUNS  4367 Thursday 4 February 1999

Environment: Germany ponders problem of nuclear waste



Berlin, Feb 2 (IPS/Yojana Sharma) -- Environmental activists are keeping a close eye on Germany after a decision by Bonn to delay a decision on a deadline to end shipments of nuclear waste to Britain and France for reprocessing as part of a move to end using nuclear energy altogether.

The government climbed down on immediate action after Britain and France insisted on massive compensation for the loss of contracts. The move bought some time for government officials to try and sort out problems, including the massive loss of jobs at Germany's nuclear energy plants and the huge investment required to develop other sources of energy.

Also, Germany still must deal with the politically embarrassing problem of what to do with nuclear waste presently stored in Britain and France, which both countries say they cannot store indefinitely. If German plants continue producing energy from nuclear fuel, even in the short term, a solution will have to be found for storing and reprocessing nuclear waste.

According to the environmental watchdogs at Greenpeace, secret negotiations already have begun between the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry Minatom and the Eschborn-based nuclear energy company Internexco, which has admitted to German newspapers that talks had taken place with the Russian energy minister Yevgeni Adamov.

Adamov met German and Swiss firms in the Swiss city of Zurich some weeks ago offering to take up to 10,000 tonnes off their hands for some 1 billion dollars. This would represent Germany's total waste output for the next 22 years, assuming it does not shut down reactors by 2003 as the Green coalition is demanding.

Greenpeace believes that a waste dump could be built in Russia at Majak high-security complex near the town of Osjorsk where demonstration facilities for nuclear missile research are located. The environmental organisation reports that 1957 a serious nuclear accident occurred there when a dump containing 80 tonnes of radioactive waste exploded releasing a greater amount of radioactive fallout than during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Another possible site for German radioactive waste is Krasnojarsk, which also has a large facility, according to Greenpeace. "It would be irresponsible and cynical for the German Atomic industry to get rid of its waste by sending it to these ecological disaster areas," says Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace. "It is eco-dumping in its most brutal form"

Greenpeace energy expert Roland Hipp notes that conditions in Majak and Krasnojarsk are "catastrophic". "In Krasnojarsk liquid radioactive waste was forced into underground rock formations - and there has been no research into the consequences."

Despite the German ban on exports of nuclear waste and a similar Russian ban on importing nuclear waste taken in 1996, Greenpeace believes both countries are willing to do a deal. Germany, to get out of an embarrassing political situation and Russia, to earn foreign exchange.

'Anything is possible in Moscow when a couple of dollars are rustled together," notes Hipp. The Russian energy ministry is particularly interested in overturning the court ban in order to earn foreign exchange to finance to reprocessing and storage of Russia's own nuclear waste.

Greenpeace said it had obtained documents that showed that Boris Nikipelov, advisor to energy minister Adamovm, believes the necessary parliamentary approval to amend the law will be forthcoming.

The state-owned Minatom needs cash urgently to pay almost a million of its workers, who have received no salary for months.

Russia also has been holding talks with other nuclear energy users such as Taiwan and South Korea, and possibly even Japan, on the question of disposing nuclear waste. But Greenpeace believes German industry has been the most cynical in its bid to get rid of its waste.

For Germany a bargain deal with Russia has its attractions. At present Germany pays Britain and France some 2,300 dollars a kilo for reprocessing. Russia is willing to do it for half that amount, allowing Germany some leeway should Britain and France indeed demand compensation for the abrogation of nuclear waste reprocessing contracts with Germany.

The stepped-up pace of nuclear withdrawal has come as a shock to
Britain and France who reprocess most of Germany's spent nuclear fuel.
German environment minister Juergen Trittin last month visited London
and Paris to try to negotiate an amicable pull-out of nuclear
reprocessing contracts, as British and French nuclear companies demand
massive compensation. Several thousand jobs are at stake - 7,000 in
Britain alone.

In France nuclear power workers took to the streets in January to heckle Daniel Cohn Bendit - the French Green party candidate for the European Parliament. Cohn Bendit has close links to the German Green party which demanded an end to nuclear energy as a key condition for backing Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder for chancellor after elections last September.

The French nuclear recycling plant at La Hague was expanded some years ago specifically to take German waste. Although only a fifth of the plant's turnover comes from Germany, the contracts with French state-run reprocessing firm Cogema are worth HKD36 billion with contracts running till 2010.

Britain and France have both said that if Germany cancels its contracts the two partners cannot continue to store nuclear waste indefinitely, and returning the waste to Germany is a political minefield - transport of waste to France was already stopped a year ago because of a major
political row over leaking canisters.

German railways and police unions have both said they will not allow their members to be exposed to radiation should waste be transported back across Germany.

And the state of North Rhine Westphalia which borders on France has said it would block shipments of waste back to the Ahaus depot, one of the country's largest nuclear waste storage centres, situated in the state, and often the scene of running battles between police and protesters trying to block waste shipments.

Germany has only one other nuclear waste storage depots in Gorleben in the eastern state of lower Saxony - a long train journey from France.
Germany does not have its own nuclear waste processing facilities - plans in the 1980s to build one had to be abandoned after fierce protests.