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Germany approves second on-site nuke waste storage |
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| GERMANY: December 23, 2002 | ||
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FRANKFURT - Germany's authority for protection from radiation (BfS) has permitted operators of the Grohnde nuclear plant to build an on-site interim storage for nuclear waste, the environment ministry said.
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The approval is the second for one of 12 such sites which will hold German nuclear waste for up to 40 years prior to it going into a final repository. Under a nuclear consensus deal between the government and power industry signed in 2000, utilities aim to build the sites to avoid the unpopular transport of atomic waste. "BfS today gave operators (utility E.ON (EONG.DE) and GKW) of the (northern German 1,430 megawatt) Grohnde nuclear plant the go-ahead for an interim waste site," the Berlin ministry said in a press release. "Decentralised sites will drastically reduce the number to waste transports and make intra-German transports entirely unnecessary in the foreseeable future," it said. BfS said its officials had taken latest safety considerations after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. into account before approving the site's construction. A permanent storage for German nuclear waste has yet to be chosen for use after the country shuts all its nuclear plants by the early 2020s. While central storage sites at Gorleben and Ahaus could hold all of the nuclear waste until final decommissioning of the total 19 plants, on-site storage avoids rising costs to guard transports against anti-nuclear demonstrators.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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