| Introduction to Interim Storage Facilities |
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Until it is disposed of in a repository radioactive waste is stored intermediately in various facilities. In Germany it is distinguished between waste with negligible heat generation and heat-generating waste. Heat-generating wasteAmong the heat-generating waste are especially the spent fuel elements from the operation of nuclear power plants and the high-level radioactive waste (so-called HAW waste block canisters) from the reprocessing of German fuel elements in La Hague (France) and Sellafield (Great Britain).In order to be able to utilise the cavity in a future repository in an optimum way both the spent fuel elements and the HAW waste block canisters need to be stored intermediately for decaying and cooling down before they can be emplaced in a repository for heat-generating waste. For some years the spent fuel elements arising during the residual life spans of the nuclear power plants have been stored in so-called decentralised interim storage facilities immediately on the site of the nuclear power plants. In the centralised interim storage facilities both spent fuel elements from the earlier operation of nuclear power plants and the returned high-level radioactive waste from reprocessing are stored intermediately. Radioactive waste with negligible heat generationAlso for radioactive waste with negligible heat generation interim storage facilities were installed as collecting and buffer storage facilities and because it was not possible to dispose of the waste for lack of a repository. Between 1967 and 1978 waste with negligible heat generation – then still referred to as low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste – was disposed of in the Asse II salt mine (test repository) according to the conception at that time. Another option to dispose of this waste was to dispose of it in the Morsleben repository for radioactive waste (ERAM) until 1998.In future it is intended to dispose of the waste with negligible heat generation in the former Konrad mine near Salzgitter. On 30 May 2007 the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety commissioned the BfS to conduct the necessary conversion of the mine. Further information: |