Eyes fixed
on a screen, joystick in hand, the operator of a remote-controlled saw
painstakingly dismantles metal rods at one of Germany’s mothballed nuclear
reactors.
Time-consuming
and costly, the operation to methodically carve up the core of EnBW’s Obrigheim
reactor in the country’s southwest is now more than half way through.
In total,
275,000 tonnes of machinery, pipes and other equipment that enabled the power
station to operate for 37 years must be stripped down. Of that, almost one
percent, or about 2,000 tonnes, is radioactive material.
Even as
EnBW sees its days as a nuclear operator come to an end, it now envisions a
future as an expert in nuclear scrapping.
Nuclear
dismantling can prove to be a “new field of activity,” said company spokesman
Ulrich Schroeder, at a time when countries including Switzerland and Italy have
also decided to end their reliance on atomic energy.
“We now
have a real competence in dismantling, managing and recycling waste,” said
Schroeder.
Under
Germany’s “Energiewende” or energy transition, a phased exit from nuclear power
and embrace of green energy, the entire site is expected to be disassembled by
2025, two decades after it stopped producing nuclear energy.
“Every step
is carried out manually, remotely,” site engineer Michael Hillmann told AFP at
the control room of the power station nestled in the undulating Neckar valley.
What
remains of the reactor is submerged under water in a room that hardly anyone
enters, at least not without protective gear and not for more than 10 minutes
at a time.
The pieces
are mechanically removed to a separate “packaging” room where they are stored
in yellow casks designed to safely hold radioactive waste.
- New
inhabitants? -
Ex-chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder’s centre-left government decided early last decade to phase
out atomic power. The push was initially reversed by his conservative successor
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who then revived it after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima
nuclear disaster.
Dismantling
the Obrigheim reactor began in 2008 following a long preparatory stage which
involved various authorities painstakingly planning and okaying every step of
the process down to the last detail.
Each piece
that is cut away is carefully recorded while the work is carried out in a
stipulated order, with the aim of leaving behind an entirely safe site.
One day the
now empty offices, warehouses and even the huge dome that housed the reactor
could even interest new inhabitants, said Manfred Moeller, the site’s operative
manager.
EnBW,
Germany’s third-biggest power supplier, is cutting its teeth with Obrigheim.
Like its
competitors, the operator has to gradually shutter all its nuclear power
stations and dismantle them following the government’s decision to turn its back
on the energy source.
Two of the
company’s four other reactors were halted soon after the Japanese accident,
while the other two still have several years to run.
Of the
total nine still operating in Germany, EnBW’s Neckarwestheim II reactor is set
to be the very last to close by 2022.
Germany’s
nuclear power operators finance the dismantling through provisions set aside
over years.
EnBW has
put on the side more than seven billion euros ($9.5 billion), its part in a
total 30-billion-euro pot from Germany’s four operators.
The company
predicts it will have dismantled all its reactors by the 2040s, but questions
remains over where the radioactive waste will be permanently stored.
The issue
of where to put the waste has split Germany since the 1980s, which saw large
protests near temporary storage sites. The hunt for a permanent waste depot has
been relaunched under Merkel. In the meanwhile, the waste is held at temporary
sites.
“We must
have the possibility to get rid of waste,” said Moeller. “That’s part
and parcel of the energy transition.”
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