STATE OF THE ON-SITE STORAGE OF SPENT FUEL ASSEMBLIES AT GERMAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AND FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE OPERATION

In 2002 an amendment of the German Atomic Energy Act fixed – beside a limitation of a certain amount of electricity generation – the stop of the transport of spent fuel assemblies to the reprocessing plants after July 1st 2005 and the storage of spent fuel assemblies at the NPP sites. To comply with these legal requirements, at twelve sites German utilities chose a cask storage method. For the time being, the fuel assemblies are stored in casks type CASTOR® fabricated by GNS, but also casks types of TNI and MHI are foreseen in future. In 2007 all on-site interim storages at all twelve plant sites were put into operation and in total 163 casks of CASTOR® V type have been loaded and stored in Germany