A leaked European Commission draft report says Europe should solve the problem of handling nuclear waste by making industry pay to stash it deep underground, where it will be overseen by independent watchdogs.
"The current situation of spent fuel and radioactive waste management in EU member states is not satisfactory," says the draft, seen by Reuters Thursday.
Green MEPs say the commission's draft proposals on a nuclear waste directive contains "serious and alarming gaps."
EU energy commissioner Oettinger will unveil the commission's ideas for a directive on the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste on November 3.
Germany's environment minister made himself out to be a crisis manager in the scandal surrounding the Asse nuclear waste storage facility. But the problem has not been solved -- and the issue threatens to derail the CDU’s plans to postpone Germany's nuclear phaseout.
A report published in Germany's Focus magazine alleges that authorities in the state of Lower Saxony were aware of safety issues at the Asse II atomic storage facility 15 years ago.
The Focus report says the state government, led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at the time, commissioned a technical report on potential hazards at the converted salt mine in 1991.
BERLIN, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Radioactive water is leaking from an old salt and potash mine in Germany that had been converted to a storage facility for nuclear waste.
The discovery of the leak has reopened debate about nuclear power, theerman magazine Der Spiegel reports. German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel described the mine as "the most problematic nuclear facility in Europe."
GERMANY: With a return to nuclear power set to be a key election topic next year, a leaking waste site has refocused attention on safety, writes Derek Scally .
ST BARBARA has learned to be flexible in her job description.
For 40 years, a statue of the patron saint of miners has watched from an illuminated shrine in the wall of the Konrad mine shaft, one kilometre underground near the German city of Braunschweig.
BERLIN, July 8 (IPS) - Confirmation that radioactive brine has been leaking for two decades from a German underground deposit for nuclear waste is yet another blow to the idea that nuclear power can safely increase electricity generation and simultaneously reduce emissions.
Radioactive leaks from the nuclear waste deposit Asse II near Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, some 225 km southwest of Berlin, were first discovered in 1988. The state-owned Helmholtz Institute for
Scientific Research, which operates the centre, officially admitted the leaks only Jun. 16, under pressure from the German press.
Sealing radioactive waste at an underground disposal site in Asse, Germany, by flooding is the cheapest of several waste management options but would produce dangerous amounts of radioactive methane in
groundwater within 150-750 years, according to a forthcoming report from the German radiation protection agency (BfS). The findings are significant because the site, an ex-salt mine containing nuclear research waste, is geologically similar to the planned long-term disposal site at Gorleben. The report could influence calculations of nuclear waste disposal costs.
