Greenpeace Germany news: legal action against dumping of German spent fuel at SRS – US DOE’s headaches over illegal scheme just got worse – the cure is to ditch the dodgy dumping deal
“NUCLEAR WASTE EXPORTS FROM GERMANY TO THE U.S. WOULD VIOLATE EUROPEAN LAW – GREENPEACE FILES COMPLAINT WITH EUROPEAN COMMISSION”
Hamburg, 10 June 2015 – The export of high level nuclear waste from Germany to the United States would violate European law, Greenpeace has announced. In a legal complaint filed today with the European Commission, Greenpeace lawyers detail how the transports of nuclear waste from the Jülich research centre would be contrary to Directive 2011/70 / EURATOM of the European Union. The German government, regional government of Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, and the research centre Julich, have proposed export 152 high-level radioactive Castor transport casks from Jülich to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The nuclear waste was produced at the now shutdown AVR reactor at Julich. Under plans developed in secret between Germany authorities and the U.S. Department of Energy, the waste fuel would be reprocessed at Savannah River.
The Greenpeace commissioned legal analysis concludes that under Directive 2011/70 / EURATOM it is prohibited to export nuclear waste that was produced in a commercial nuclear reactor to a country outside the European Union. The commercial nuclear power reactor AVR at Jülich supplied 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity into the grid during its operation.
Greenpeace has requested in its filing to the European Commission, that they open a legal case against Germany and specifically those responsible representatives at Federal and State level.
full news release – linked here
legal complaint in German, dated 9 June – linked here
summary of legal complaint in English – linked here
More from Greenpeace Germany: “Greenpeace reicht EU-Beschwerde gegen Atommülltransport aus Jülich ein, 10 June 2015 — linked here
DOE claims that the “draft environmental assessment” (draft EA) on the reprocessing and dumping of the German spent fuel at SRS will be issued in July. Given that the proposal is now snarled up in an initial legal proceeding, don’t bet that the July date will be met. Expect more delays and the odds are increasing that the dodgy scheme will not go forward. See DOE’s June 15 list of dates of release of environmental documents linked here – see page 22.