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Nuclear waste barrels in the Morsleben repository (archive image)
Photo: Jens Wolf / dpa
When the last German nuclear power plants go offline on December 31, 2022, a piece of German history will also be shut down.
Nuclear power supplied households and factories with energy for 60 years, and resistance to this type of power generation and the associated risks was organized for almost as long.
The protest against nuclear power also spawned a new party, the Greens, whose politicians even looked at the Federal Chancellery at times.
After December 31, 2022, only one thing will remain of nuclear power: garbage.
Two generations have benefited from the power supply, at least 40,000 generations will have to live with the garbage.
This corresponds to a million years, the period for which the repository must be designed according to the law.
But what amounts are you talking about?
And where should they go?
The overview.
How much rubbish is there?
In Germany, a distinction is made between two groups of radioactive waste:
Waste with high
levels of
radioactivity
, the radiation of which generates great heat.
These are, for example, spent
fuel elements
from the reactors of nuclear power plants.
Waste that hardly generates any heat
.
These can be
radiation sources from medicine
that are used in cancer therapy, but also
remains from old nuclear power plants
.
According to an estimate by the Federal Environment Ministry, around 650,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste will be produced by 2080.
Only around five percent of these are highly radioactive waste, but they produce 99 percent of the radioactivity of all German nuclear waste, as the graphic shows.
The remaining 623,000 cubic meters produce only one percent of the radioactivity.
Some of this waste does not even exist today; it will only arise when the nuclear power plants and research reactors are dismantled.
As a result, the amount of waste will increase significantly in the coming decades.
The 623,000 cubic meters also contain 220,000 cubic meters of waste from the Asse II repository.
They were stored there between 1967 and 1978.
But water has been entering the mine for years and the facility is in danger of collapsing.
The waste should therefore be recovered.
Another 100,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste is expected to come from uranium enrichment.
Where is the garbage currently stored?
In Germany there are currently three underground repository sites for nuclear waste that hardly produces any heat.
In two of them, Morsleben and Asse, the last garbage was stored decades ago and nothing more.
In the case of the aces, this should be taken out again.
The third repository is the Konrad shaft near Salzgitter in Lower Saxony, which is still under construction and is expected to hold around 300,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste.
However, its capacity will not be sufficient for the waste from Asse and uranium enrichment, so another repository for this type of nuclear waste is needed.
There is still no repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste, the Federal Association for Final Storage is currently looking for a suitable location.
This should be fixed by 2031.
Politicians had designated the Gorleben salt dome as a repository, but that never happened.
There have been protests for decades and doubts as to whether Gorleben is suitable as a repository.
The search was therefore restarted in 2013.
Since there are no final repositories, most of the nuclear waste is currently stored above ground in interim storage facilities.
There are more than 30 of these in Germany, as the map shows.
The highly radioactive waste is stored in the two central interim storage facilities in Ahaus, Gorleben, in Jülich and Lubmin, as well as directly at twelve nuclear power plants.
In the other camps, low- and medium-level radioactive waste is collected.
How long does nuclear waste emit?
Radioactivity decreases over time, as does the heat generated by radioactive radiation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has calculated the activity of nuclear waste from one ton of fuel elements.
The graphic shows the course within the first 300 years:
At the beginning, the activity is around 11,000 terabecquerels, which is fatal for humans within a very short time.
Activity drops to 75 terabecquerels in 300 years.
This is because many substances in the nuclear waste break down very quickly, for example strontium-90.
After a few thousand years, the activity roughly corresponds to that of uranium ore, as occurs in nature.
The repository for highly radioactive waste, which is currently being sought, should have the best possible safety for a million years.
And even after this long period of time, there is still radioactive decay: substances such as neptunium-237 or cesium-135 have comparatively low activity, but continue to radiate constantly for millions of years.
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