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Nuclear Safety · Radiological Protection

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Last update: March 2012

Developments in Germany following the nuclear disaster in Japan

First measures following the accident

On 11th March 2011, a severe earthquake occurred off the coast of Japan. This earthquake and the tsunami which followed caused serious damage to several Japanese nuclear power plants, and to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in particular. On the same day a crisis unit was set up by Germany's Federal Ministry for the Environment; this unit continued to exist, expanding as necessary, for more than four weeks. Its primary aims were to keep the population of Germany informed about events in Japan and their impact, to prevent the import of potentially contaminated foodstuffs and products, and to ensure that German citizens currently in Japan were protected from any radiological effects arising from the accident. This also involved dispatching representatives of the Federal Ministry for the Environment to the German embassy in Tokyo.

Safety review of German nuclear power plants

On 14th March 2011, in the light of events in Japan, the federal government and the prime ministers of the five federal states with nuclear power plant sites decided to review the safety of all German nuclear power plants. The autonomous Reactor Safety Commission (RSK), responsible for advising the Federal Ministry for the Environment on issues of nuclear safety, and staffed by a panel of recognised experts, was commissioned with the formulation and final assessment of the safety review procedure - in the form of a stress/robustness test - for all German nuclear power plants. In summary, the RSK observed in its first statement dated 16th May 2011 that, compared with the Fukushima nuclear power plant, German facilities apparently featured more safeguards concerning the power supply and the possibility of flooding. Further robustness tests revealed no uniform findings that could be related to either plant design or age. The RSK did however pinpoint areas requiring further investigation and analysis; the commission is currently working on a final appraisal resulting from its plant-specific series of safety reviews.

Phasing-out nuclear energy

Concurrent with the work of the RSK, the federal government convened the Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply at the beginning of April 2011 with the aim of establishing a public consensus on future sources of energy, in consideration of the risks of using nuclear energy. The commission submitted its recommendations on 30th May 2011, concluding that although the risks associated with nuclear energy may not have changed owing to the events in Fukushima, the way these risks are perceived has. The possibility of an accident spiralling out of control is therefore of crucial importance at a national level. The aim should be to limit the use of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity as much as possible and to achieve the phasing-out of nuclear energy within a decade. The existence of lower risk alternatives is what makes phasing-out a real option.

On the basis of the findings of reviews, discussions and reports submitted by both the RSK and the Ethics Commission, the 'Thirteenth Amendment to the Atomic Energy Act' was passed by huge majority in the German Parliament on 30th June 2011. For the seven oldest German nuclear power plants and for the Krümmel facility this meant the forfeiture of their power generation licences. Owing to a prior decision by federal government and the prime ministers of the federal states with nuclear sites, they had already been taken offline. The phasing-out of the remaining nine nuclear power plants will conclude in 2022.

The law came into force on 6th August 2011.

The European Stress Test

At European level, the European Council declared on 24th/25th March 2011 that "the safety of all EU nuclear plants should be reviewed, on the basis of a comprehensive and transparent risk and safety assessment ("stress tests"). In Germany the EU stress test was conducted - in addition to the RSK's own safety reviews - during the second half of 2011. It revealed that in terms of the three central aspects (external events, power and coolant failure, emergency response), conservative and tough design requirements had been realised at the time of construction; there remains, however, room for on - going improvements to power plant safety, especially with relation to emergency control - to be pursued by the relevant authorities of the federal states in question. The Federal Ministry for the Environment has asked the RSK to take into account the results of the EU stress test (due for publication at the end of April 2012) during its continuing discussions on ways in which to improve the safety of German nuclear power plants.

Other measures

In addition to the safety review of German nuclear power plants, the risk analysis is also to include other nuclear facilities. The relevant state authorities have already finished reviewing all research reactors with a continuous thermal load of over 50 kilowatts and forwarded the results to the RSK. The RSK plans to conclude its discussions on the safety review of research reactors with a statement scheduled for release in the spring of 2012.

The Nuclear Waste Management Commission (ESK), another advisory body to the Federal Ministry for the Environment staffed by independent experts, was commissioned in the summer of 2011 with developing review concepts for facilities - either already commissioned or under construction - intended for the treatment, interim storage, or disposal of irradiated fuel elements, heat-generating and other types of radioactive waste, as well as for the Gronau uranium enrichment plant and the fuel element production plant in Lingen. These deliberations need to take into account the results of the RSK discussions and the review of the nuclear power plants by the supervisory authorities and their inspectors. The corresponding concept is likely to be presented by the ESK during the first six months of 2012, the results of its reviews during the second half of 2012. One major measure undertaken by the Federal Ministry for the Environment following the analysis conducted in June 2011 into what actually happened in Fukushima was its commissioning of the Commission on Radiological Protection (SSK) with a review of the statutory regulations governing the off-site emergency response. The course of events in Japan differed greatly from that of Chernobyl, allowing new experience to be gained in practically every field of emergency preparedness. The existing analyses conducted by the Japanese government and the International Atomic Energy Agency into the accident, the RSK safety review series, as well as experience and observations made by the SSK crisis unit all need to be taken into account during the legislative review process.