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Protests against a Castor transport to Gorleben (archive picture)
Photo: WOLFGANG RATTAY / REUTERS
The nuclear phase-out decided no more Castor transports: It was quiet in recent years on the subject of nuclear waste.
But when the Federal Agency for Final Storage presents the sub-areas in Germany that are to be considered for a final repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste, the conflict should flare up again.
One thing is clear: no place will want nuclear waste, and yet it is there.
Society has to find a way to deal with it.
In an interview, the political scientist Achim Brunnengräber from the Free University of Berlin explains how this can work and how other countries solve it.
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Brunnengräber, why is it so difficult to find a nuclear waste repository?
Achim Brunnengräber:
Above all, it is the risk associated with the disposal of high-level radioactive waste.
It's about building something that is supposed to be safe for over a million years, i.e. for the equivalent of 40,000 generations.
A motorway, a power line or wind turbines can be demolished again by future generations if they have other technologies available.
We cannot do that with a repository.
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