Dismantling prototype nuclear plant closed 35 years ago could cost German state €1 bln

Germany's federal government may have to pick up a one billion euro tab to dismantle a nuclear power plant that shut down in 1989 as the operating company responsible for it faces insolvency, reported Handelsblatt. The western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is now looking for new businesses to dismantle the plant after the operating company, whose shareholders are energy supplier RWE and several municipal utilities, said its financial liquidity was "acutely at risk" and it intended to file for insolvency in the next few weeks. RWE declined to comment.

The 300-megawatt Hamm-Uentrop prototype plant only operated its experimental high temperature reactor for three years before the trial was shut down. The core part of the reactor has been in 5-metre-thick concrete “safe enclosure” since 1997, after the fuel elements were removed two years earlier.

The plant is not part of an agreement between the state and nuclear power plant operators from 2017, intended to secure utility payments for the nuclear clean-up. Under that agreement, operators are charged with decommissioning and dismantling the reactors, while the obligation for disposing of the waste was transferred to the state – with operators paying 24 billion euros into a fund to finance disposal.

The state of NRW now said it intends to pass the bill to the federal government because the state is compliant with the Atomic Energy Act, a federal law. Under the German constitution, the central government must bear the costs when the federal states are acting on its behalf. Insiders told Handelsblatt that NRW has a good chance of shirking the costs.  

Germany is in the process of dismantling its nuclear power plants after its last three were shut down in 2023 as part of the country's nuclear phase-out. Dismantling nuclear power stations and safely storing radioactive waste will cost Germany dozens of billions of euros, and take many decades.