The Pacific Grebe, a specialist nuclear transport vessel carrying radioactive nuclear waste from the UK, was met by anti-nuclear activists when it arrived at Nordenham port in north-western Germany. The nuclear waste was the result of reprocessing fuel elements from decommissioned German NPPs at the UK’s Sellafield site.
This was the second of three planned shipments. Seven flasks containing high level waste (HLW) were transported by rail from the Sellafield site in West Cumbria to the port of Barrow-in-Furness, where they were then loaded onto the Pacific Grebe, operated by Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS).
Vitrified Residue Returns (VRR) are a key component of the UK’s strategy to repatriate HLW from the Sellafield site, fulfilling overseas contracts. The first shipment of six flasks each with 28 containers of HLW to Biblis took place in 2020.
According to Germany’s Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE – Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung)) the transport licence for the latest shipment was approved in December. Until 2005 German utilities shipped used fuel from NPPs to La Hague in France and Sellafield in the UK for reprocessing: “The resulting liquid waste was then melted down into glass and has since been gradually returned to Germany,” BASE noted. “The last shipment of this waste from France was returned in November 2024.” There is one more shipment planned, after the current one, from the UK to complete the repatriation.”
BASE issued a licence in April 2023 for the storage of the vitrified waste at the Isar interim storage facility, which is licensed to hold a maximum of 152 casks of high-level radioactive waste and “according to current plans, there will be 28 fewer high-level waste casks there than originally intended, including the casks containing the vitrified waste”.
According to Germany’s Society for Nuclear Service (GNS – Gesellschaft für Nuklear‑Service), “The waste is massively shielded from external radiation. In the reprocessing plant, the waste is mixed with liquid silicate glass and poured into cylindrical stainless-steel containers, which are then sealed tightly after hardening. These containers, filled with the hardened glass mixture, are called “glass moulds”. For transport and storage, the moulds are placed in … massive, more than 100-tonne cast iron and stainless-steel containers, which have been proven in extensive tests to provide both strong shielding and to be safe under extreme conditions.”
Until 2011 reprocessed waste was sent to the Gorleben interim storage facility in Lower Saxony, where 108 casks of vitrified radioactive waste have been stored, which was “already a large proportion of the total waste to be returned from reprocessing”. BASE said, as part of the Site Selection Act of 2013 to seek a repository for high-level radioactive waste, the remaining vitrified waste abroad was to be stored in interim storage facilities at nuclear power plant sites.
“The aim was to avoid giving the impression that Gorleben had already been chosen as the site for a final storage facility during the open-ended search for a repository site. In 2015, the federal government, the federal states and the utility companies agreed to store the remaining radioactive waste in Biblis, Brokdorf, Niederaichbach (Isar NPP) and Philippsburg,” BASE noted.
France’s Orano completed the 13th and final rail shipment from France of vitrified high-level nuclear waste, to Philippsburg, in Germany in November 2024. In total 5,310 tonnes of German used fuel was processed at Orano’s La Hague plant up to 2008.
The latest shipment of waste from Sellafield is due to be transported to the interim storage facility at the site of the former Niederaichbach NPP in southern Bavaria. The Niederaichbach heavy water gas cooled reactor operated for only 18 months from 1972-1973. From 1975 to 1995 the plant was demolished and the site returned to greenfield condition. A monument marks its former location near the closed Isar NPP.
Germany’s Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE – Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung) is in the process of identifying a suitable location for the permanent underground storage for 27,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste produced over the course of 60 years of German nuclear energy production.
On arrival at Nordenham port, the seven castor containers were transferred by crane from the Pacific Grebe to a train in the harbour, where tests were carried out to ensure legal radiation limits were not exceeded. The containers each measure four metres in length and weigh over 100 tonnes.
The train’s route to the Isar storage facility is not being publicised for security reasons.
Further protests are planned along the presumed route of the train over the coming days, including in the cities of Bremen and Göttingen. “Every castor transport is one too many because it only postpones the problem and does not solve it,” Kerstin Rudek, a spokesperson for the group Castor-Stoppen, said in a statement, adding that nuclear waste should not be moved until a safe, final storage location is determined.
