DECOMMISSIONING OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES IN GERMANY - STATUS AT BMBF SITES

In a period of approximately 40 years prior to 1994, the German Federal Government had spent about {approx} 15 billion to promote nuclear technology. These funds were earmarked for R&D projects as well as demonstration facilities which took up operation between 1960 and 1980. These BMBF (Federal Ministry for Research) facilities were mainly located at the sites of the federal research centers at Juelich and Karlsruhe (the research reactors AVR, FR2, FRJ-1, KNK, and MZFR, the pilot reprocessing plant WAK) but included also the pilot plants SNR-300 and THTR-300 for fast breeder and high-temperature gas-cooled reactor development, respectively, and finally the salt mine Asse which had been used for waste emplacement prior to conversion into an underground research laboratory. In the meantime, almost all of these facilities were shut down and are now in a state of decommissioning and dismantling. This is mainly due to the facts that R&D needs are satisfied or do not exist any more and that, secondly, the lack of political consensus led to the cancellation of advanced nuclear technology