2023-08-21 06:38:10
Like the site of Greifswald, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the work to dismantle nuclear power plants is colossal in Germany. They sometimes started in the mid-1990s and some will only be completed in decades. And the waste problem has not been solved.
Angela Merkel’s Germany chose to turn its back on nuclear power in 2011, following the Fukushima disaster. Twelve years later, the last power stations were disconnected from the network last April, marking the beginning of a new era: the colossal work of dismantling the installations.
In the coming years, 33 German reactors are to be dismantled.
In Greifswald-Lubmin, in the former GDR, nearly two million tonnes of materials, a third of which are radioactive, must be recycled or prepared for storage centers. “Here, we cut major components such as pressurizers and that will keep us busy until 2040”, explains Kurt Radloff, the site’s spokesperson, Monday in La Matinale.
The waste problem
And finishing this dismantling by 2040 is a real challenge for the electricity producers in charge of the operation, because they are facing a shortage of manpower.
But the biggest problem concerns the absence of a storage center for the 17,000 tonnes of the most radioactive waste, which will have to lie underground for a million years.
The political authorities have postponed until 2068 the question of the choice of the disposal site. Sixty additional years will then be necessary for its construction.
“We might have had a storage center for highly radioactive waste. In my opinion, this has been prevented until now for purely ideological reasons”, indignantly Jörg Viermann, sales director of the specialized company GNS.
Radio subject: Nathalie Versieux
Web adaptation: Raphaël Dubois
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