People in Germany think that nuclear is worse than coal, and I think that\u2019s a shame for all of us,”\u00a0says one nuclear power advocate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Given the timeframes involved, it\u2019s not surprising that no country has built a final repository for high-level waste. In Germany, a government commission on highly radioactive nuclear waste spent the last two years working on a 700-page report, released this month, that was supposed to recommend a location. Instead, the report estimated that Germany\u2019s final storage facility would be ready \u201cin the next century.\u201d Costs are expected to be astronomical.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody can say how much it will cost to store high-level waste. What we know is that it will be very costly \u2013 much higher costs can be expected than [what] the German ministry calculates,\u201d said Claudia Kemfert, head of energy, transportation, and environment at the German Institute for Economic Research. The exact number, she said, \u201ccannot be predicted, since experience shows that costs have always been higher than initially expected. \u201d<\/p>\n
At the Asse II mine, roughly US$680 million has been spent in the six years since the cleanup began, and the price tag for operations last year totaled US$216 million. A\u00a02015 report<\/a>\u00a0by Germany\u2019s Environment Ministry noted:\u00a0\u201cThere are currently no technical plans available for the envisaged waste recovery project which would allow a reliable estimate of the costs.\u201d<\/p>\n No-one expects to start moving the barrels at the mine until 2033, and estimates of when the process will be finished suggest it could be as late as\u00a02065. Total costs for moving the waste to a future storage site will almost certainly be in the billions of dollars, with current estimates of just disposing of the recovered waste at US$5.5 billion.<\/p>\n The waste issue is one reason nuclear power has been so controversial in Germany and why there is broad support among the public for phasing it out, with three-quarters of the German population saying they are in favour of Merkel\u2019s decision, according to a survey this year by the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster.<\/p>\n \u201cNuclear in Germany is not popular,\u201d Kemfert said. \u201cEverybody knows it is dangerous and causes a lot of environmental difficulties. Nuclear has been replaced by renewables \u2013 we have no need for nuclear power any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout Europe, it is difficult to find many voices calling for nuclear power as a bridge technology to fight climate change. But not all environmentalists have rejected nuclear.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in Germany think nuclear is worse than coal, and I think that’s a shame for all of us,\u201d says Kirsty Gogan, a former spokesperson for the Nuclear Industry Association and a co-founder of the London-based Energy for Humanity, an NGO that describes itself as a pro-nuclear environmental group. \u201cNuclear is not posing an immediate threat to anyone’s health or the environment. Coal is the enemy of our earth and our climate, so I would prioritise shutting down coal.\u201d<\/p>\n In Germany, negotiations with utilities over who will pay the denuclearisation costs have often centred on how much the utilities can afford. The four nuclear utilities in Germany \u2013 publicly-traded RWE; E.ON; EnBW, which is majority publicly-owned; and Swedish-owned Vattenfall \u2013 are struggling economically as decentralised wind and solar power have undercut wholesale electricity prices and eaten into profits. Last year, E.ON, Germany’s largest utility, lost $7.7 billion.<\/p>\n The four companies have already set aside US$45 billion for decommissioning nuclear power plants. But in April, Germany’s Commission to Review the Financing for the Phase-Out of Nuclear Energy recommended that the utilities pay an additional US$26.4 billion into a government-controlled fund meant to cover the costs of long-term storage of nuclear waste.<\/p>\n The utilities were unhappy with the commission’s conclusions and released a joint statement saying US$26.4 billion would “overburden energy companies’\u00a0economic capabilities.” Even so, few experts expect those sums to cover the total eventual costs.<\/p>\n “Some billions now are better than making them bankrupt,” said Michael Mueller, who chairs a government commission on highly radioactive nuclear waste. “So, it’s a compromise that had to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n The utilities are clear about where they see the responsibility: “The temporary and final storage of nuclear waste in Germany is an operative task of the German government, which is politically responsible for this,” the utilities said in a statement. Indeed, if the commission’s recommendation becomes law, then the German government will be on the hook for any storage costs beyond the US$26.4 billion paid by the utilities.<\/p>\n “Asse II shows us that radioactive waste storage is a complex problem that is not just about dumping it somewhere,” said Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear energy expert at Greenpeace. “There are many open questions, and those questions are going to lead to a lot more costs.”<\/p>\n Radioactive water was first detected leaking at Asse II in 2008, and the German Bundestag (national parliament)\u00a0passed a law five years later that mandated removal of the waste. Above ground, the complex is just a few fenced-in buildings amid forests and farms. Underground, passageways have closed or collapsed. One main elevator shaft going down into the mine can be used for transporting large machinery, such as front loaders, some of which has to be welded together in underground workshops. As for the areas with actual waste, workers have spent years drilling into just one of 13 chambers to test for gas and radioactivity.<\/p>\n “No one goes in,” said Stelljes. “We haven’t even developed the machines we would need for moving the waste.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n With nuclear waste storage and decommissioning, governments worldwide have opted for halfway solutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Asse was intended as a secret stopgap solution when West Germany first starting shipping nuclear waste there in 1967. The problem is, no one seems to have come up with anything better since. Germany still doesn’t have a permanent nuclear waste storage facility. One other underground site, Morsleben \u2014 a salt mine used as a nuclear dump by the former East German government \u2014 is slated for a cleanup expected to cost at least US$1.6 billion.<\/p>\n A former iron mine, Konrad, is being converted into a site to store low- and medium-level waste; it is expected to be completed in 2022. Low- and medium-level waste account for 90%\u00a0of Germany’s total nuclear waste, but just 0.1%\u00a0of the total radioactivity of the nation\u2019s waste.<\/p>\n The most dangerous and controversial waste is heavy-metal-laden, heat-producing waste from spent fuel rods. Germany expects the total of that high-level waste to take up 28,100 cubic metres\u00a0\u2014 a fraction of the volume of low- and medium-level waste the country must eventually store. Preliminary plans from Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection call for a high-level waste repository to be built by 2050, with storage complete by 2130, and final sealing of the repository as late as 2170.<\/p>\n “No one has a finished concept [for storage of high-level waste], so no one can give us a finished budget,” Haverkamp said. “I won’t give an estimate anymore, but the numbers are in the billions. How many? No one knows. That’s the problem in Germany, you have to reserve a certain amount of money, but how much?”<\/p>\n With both nuclear waste storage and decommissioning, governments and power companies around the world have often opted for halfway solutions, storing waste in temporary depots and partially decommissioning plants. Worldwide, 447 operational nuclear reactors exist and an additional 157 are in various stages of decommissioning. Just\u00a017 have been fully decommissioned<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Europe, a\u00a0recent report<\/a>\u00a0by the EU\u00a0Commission estimated that funds set aside for waste storage and decommissioning of nuclear plants in the EU’s 16 nuclear nations have fallen short by US$137 billion. Dealing with nuclear waste in the United Kingdom is also a highly charged issue. At one location \u2014 a former weapons-manufacturing, fuel-reprocessing, and decommissioning site called Sellafield \u2014 the expected cleanup cost increased from US$59 billion in 2005 to US$155 billion in 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite such problems, 60 nuclear reactors\u00a0are<\/a> under construction in 15 countries<\/a>. China is the most active, with 32 operating reactors and more than 20 under construction.In the United States, the Tennessee Valley Authority\u2019s Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power plant\u00a0went into operation<\/a>\u00a0in June, becoming the US\u2019 first new nuclear plant since 1996. “It\u2019s a big step forward for clean energy, and we really have to be pushing that as hard as we can for the sake of the climate \u2013 all sources of clean energy, which includes nuclear,\u201d MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel\u00a0told the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet despite recently completing a new plant, the US\u00a0is also struggling with decommissioning. The cost estimates of shuttering US\u00a0nuclear plants increased fourfold between 1988 and 2013, according to\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a> News<\/a>. Many governments are slowly starting to realise how much those costs have been underestimated.<\/p>\n As Antony Froggatt, a nuclear expert and researcher at Chatham House \u2014 a London-based think tank\u2014 put it, “The question is, how do you create a fair cost to cover what will happen far into the future?”<\/p>\n![\"Barrels](\"https:\/\/chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/content_image\/content_image\/1575\/lader_mit_faessern_b_1975_800v2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"German](\"https:\/\/chinadialogue-production.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/content_image\/content_image\/1578\/2015-09-01-npp-germany-map_DataBFS2015_CleanEnergyWire_800.jpg\")
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\nLocation and status of Germany\u2019s nuclear power stations.\u00a0Enlarge<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Credit:\u00a0Clean Energy Wire\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n