Row over nuclear waste export to US threatens repository law

Considerations within Germany’s governing conservative party CDU to transfer 152 containers with radioactive fuel elements from a research reactor to the US could deal a blow to the country’s search for a final repository for its nuclear waste, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Germany’s government-appointed nuclear phase-out expert commission last year ruled out exporting nuclear waste as a way of dealing with the hazardous legacy, but the CDU-led Federal Ministry of Education and Research opposed a blanket nuclear waste embargo within the government, Bauchmüller explains. Politicians of the Green and Left parties criticised the conservatives for “blocking the law” to find a final repository and urged that “the commission’s recommendations have to be implemented one-to-one”, Bauchmüller writes.

Read the article in German here.

For more information, see the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out.