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When the last German nuclear power plants are shut down on December 31, 2022, a part of German history will also be closed. Nuclear power supplied power to homes and factories for 60 years, and resistance to this type of power generation and associated risks was organized for almost as long. The protest against nuclear energy also spawned a new party, the Greens, whose politicians even looked at the Federal Chancellery at times.
After December 31, 2022, there will only be one thing left from nuclear power: garbage.
Two generations have benefited from the electricity supply, at least 40,000 generations will have to live with the garbage. This corresponds to one million years, a period for which repositories must be designed in accordance with the law. But what amounts are you talking about? And where should they go? The summary.
How much garbage is there?
In Germany, a distinction is made between two groups of radioactive waste:
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Highly radioactive wastewhose radiation generates great heat. These are, for example, burned Fuel assemblies of nuclear power plant reactors.
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Waste that hardly generates heat. The ability Radiation sources of medicine that are used in cancer therapy, but also Remains of old nuclear power plants.
According to an estimate by the Federal Ministry of the Environment, around 650,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste will be produced by 2080. Only about five percent of this is highly radioactive waste, but it produces 99 percent of the radioactivity of all German nuclear waste, as the graph shows.
The remaining 623,000 cubic meters produce only one percent of the radioactivity. Some of these wastes don’t even exist today, they will only emerge when 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 deposit. They were stored there between 1967 and 1978. But water has been entering the mine for years and the facility is in danger of collapse. Therefore, the waste must be recovered. Another 100,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste is expected to come from uranium enrichment.
Where is garbage currently stored?
There are currently three underground nuclear waste deposits in Germany that produce little heat. In two of them, Morsleben and Asse, the last garbage was stored decades ago and nothing more. In the case of aces, this must be removed again. The third deposit is the Konrad well near Salzgitter in Lower Saxony, which is still under construction and is expected to contain around 300,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste. However, its capacity will not be sufficient for Asse waste and uranium enrichment, so another reservoir is needed for this type of nuclear waste.
There is still no deposit of highly radioactive nuclear waste, the Federal Association for Final Storage you are currently looking for a suitable location. This should be fixed by 2031. Politicians had designated the Gorleben Salt Dome as a reservoir, but that never happened. There have been protests for decades and doubts about whether Gorleben is suitable as a repository. Therefore, the search was restarted in 2013.
Since there are no final repositories, most nuclear waste is currently stored above ground in makeshift storage facilities. There are more than 30 of these in Germany, as the map shows.
The highly radioactive waste is stored at the two central intermediate storage facilities in Ahaus, Gorleben, in Jülich and Lubmin, as well as directly at twelve nuclear power plants. Low and medium level radioactive waste is collected in the other camps.
How long does nuclear waste emit?
Radioactivity decreases with 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 graph shows the course within the first 300 years:
At first, the activity hovers around 11,000 terabecquerels, which proves fatal to humans in no time. Activity drops to 75 terabecquerels in 300 years. This is because many substances in nuclear waste decompose very quickly, for example strontium 90. After a few thousand years, the activity corresponds roughly to that of uranium ore, as it occurs in nature.
The highly radioactive waste dump, currently being sought, should be as safe as possible for a million years. And even after this long period of time, there is still radioactive decay: substances like neptunium-237 or cesium-135 have comparatively low activity, but they continue to radiate constantly for millions of years.
