2009 Report to Government on National Research and

Germany
5.17 Although Germany has operated civil nuclear reac<strong>to</strong>rs for many years, fuel has
never been reprocessed on a large scale in that country. A significant quantity of
German fuel has been shipped <strong>to</strong> France and the UK for reprocessing and, under
the terms of these contracts, vitrified HLW has been returned <strong>to</strong> Germany for
disposal. Germany also proposes geological disposal of spent fuel and its early
power reac<strong>to</strong>rs are now being decommissioned. In the former East Germany,
large scale uranium mining has led <strong>to</strong> extensive contamination both on the
surface and underground.
5.18 R&D in<strong>to</strong> cleanup and waste disposal is concentrated in two federally-supported
research centres, Institut fur Nukleare Entsorgung (INE) at Karlsruhe and
Forschungszentrum Dresden (FZD). Both have links <strong>to</strong> universities, and
academic institutions such as the Technical University, Munich, or the University
of Mainz which have significant infrastructure, including a research reac<strong>to</strong>r at
Mainz.
5.19 INE is co-located with the ANKA synchrotron on the Forschungszentrum
Karlsruhe site, and has a dedicated beamline on ANKA which can be used with
radioactive materials. FZD operates the ROBL radioactive materials beamline at
the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble. Both INE and FZD have
extensive glovebox facilities optimised for geological disposal research.
5.20 Germany also hosts the European Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU) on
the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe site. This is one of the EU Joint Research
Centres and has extensive glovebox and hot cell facilities in which it conducts
experiments on wasteform development and performance, and the behaviour of
fuel in disposal conditions. Its EU-funded institutional budget is €37.9m per year.
USA
5.21 The USA has exploited nuclear fission on a large scale since the 1940s. Most
reprocessing was focused on production of plu<strong>to</strong>nium for weapons, while the
West Valley reprocessing plant, built <strong>to</strong> support civil nuclear power, never
entered full operation. Spent fuel from USA nuclear power stations is currently
s<strong>to</strong>red awaiting disposal but there is a policy review and there is increasing
interest in reprocessing this material <strong>to</strong> reduce the volumes of waste for disposal.
Decommissioning and cleanup of the weapons plants, in particular the Hanford
and Savannah River sites, present many challenges comparable <strong>to</strong> those faced
in the UK. Transuranic waste from the USA military programme (in many
respects similar <strong>to</strong> UK plu<strong>to</strong>nium contaminated material (PCM)) is disposed of
underground in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
5.22 The majority of relevant R&D in the USA is conducted in the “DOE complex”.
Within this, seven National Labora<strong>to</strong>ries have active facilities which are, or could
be, used <strong>to</strong> support radioactive waste management and disposal R&D. The DOE
programme also includes collaboration with numerous universities, including
Washing<strong>to</strong>n State, Florida State, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and
University of California, Berkeley. Several of these universities have glovebox
facilities.
CoRWM Document 2543, Oc<strong>to</strong>ber <strong>2009</strong> Page 82 of 151