Former Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung (BASE) president Wolfram König says the provisional plans by the Federal Ministry of the Environment to accelerate the search for a final nuclear waste repository are inadequate.
He argues that the plans do not reflect the new threat landscape. “We have been living in a different reality for over ten years since the restart of the repository search, and armed conflicts are increasing worldwide” König told “Welt am Sonntag”. “In this new world we should not be keeping 1,700 castor containers-each containing the released radioactivity from Chernobyl-above ground for decades in halls”.
König finds it incomprehensible that the ministry’s work programmes leave the time‑consuming procedural rules of the Site Selection Act untouched, rules that do not fundamentally contribute to security gains.
The ministry, headed by Carsten Schneider (SPD), is currently drafting a reform of the Site Selection Act (Standortauswahlgesetz, STAG) to bring the repository search forward. Schneider announced the initiative after last year it became clear that the 2031 target date in the current STAG can no longer be met. According to equal estimates from the Federal Society for Final Disposal (BGE) and the overseeing Federal Agency BASE, the process of selecting a site alone would extend to at least 2074 if the existing legal framework remains unchanged.
The ministry confirmed that, with a legal reform, a site decision by 2050 would be feasible. However, this is only an early draft at the work level, and the “engagement and approval” of the ministry’s top leadership has not yet taken place. Some media outlets have already reported on leaked content from the draft.
König criticized that the new policy‑aimed target of 2050 is missing from the draft. He also says it is unclear how the goal would be achieved: “There is no reliable project plan that shows how the target will be reached while meeting all legally required steps”. He warns that another unsubstantiated promise would be devastating for the credibility and acceptance of a safe final repository in Germany.
König served as president of the Federal Institute for Radiation Protection (BfS) from 1999 to 2017 and of the newly created Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung (BASE) until his retirement in 2024.
According to the nuclear expert, the growing threat landscape demands that the repository search be adapted to political and security realities. “We must decide how long we can continue to bear the higher risk of above‑ground interim storage and, based on that deadline, adjust the search process” König said. “Today we already have enough information to exclude unsuitable host‑rock forms and large regions from the remainder of the search”.
