The EU wants to publish its controversial taxonomy regulation on Wednesday. The fact that nuclear power could be classified as sustainable caused heated discussions in advance. The EU intends to link the green label for nuclear power to a concrete plan for a repository that will be operational by 2050. Austria’s neighbor, the Czech Republic, does not seem to believe that it can take this hurdle. The earliest date should be 2065.
The taxonomy is intended to provide investors and banks with a guide as to which technology is to be classified as sustainable. Austria and Germany reject nuclear power, but France is pushing for it. The new Czech government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala also wants to push nuclear power further. However, the country is slowing down when it comes to waste disposal: the requirement contained in the delegated legal act to ensure disposal by 2050 has been heavily criticized. Environment Minister Anna Hubackova recently described it to the Czech agency CTK as “fiction” – and A look at the circulating schedules shows why: The Czech Republic only wants to start with geological investigations in 2023, and the exact location is to be selected by 2025 – possibly also by 2030. The start of construction is planned for 2050, and commissioning is not expected until 2065.
There has been resistance in the Czech Republic for a long time, the platform against the nuclear waste repository brings together 35 municipalities and 16 associations. On the other hand, according to a survey by the IBRS agency in December 2021, two thirds of the population also support nuclear power. The majority see it as a clean and emission-free source of energy. A third of those questioned considered the issue of nuclear waste storage to be “important”.
In Austria, on the other hand, there is cross-party agreement that there should be no further expansion of nuclear power in the Czech Republic, and politicians are also opposed to nuclear waste storage facilities near the border. However, Gabriele Schweiger from the atomstopp_oberoesterreich platform, which has been actively campaigning against nuclear power and its expansion in the Czech Republic for years, does not want to see the proximity to the border as a key factor in the decision: “It depends on the geology,” she emphasizes.
Nuclear opponents on both sides of the border have long accused the Czech Republic of looking for places where little resistance is to be expected instead of geologically suitable locations – for example because people are already living with nuclear power or radioactivity. In Kravi Hora, for example, there are old uranium mines nearby, while Janoch and Na Skalim are close to existing nuclear reactors.
In a letter to the regional representative in Vysočina, ten municipalities around the short-listed site candidate Horka criticize, among other things, that nowhere else in the world is a repository planned in such a densely populated area. Around 42,000 people would live within a radius of just ten kilometers around Horka. In addition, it has not been proven that the camp is safe for hundreds of thousands of years, “it is more an experiment”.
Like the nuclear opponents from Horka and other groups, Renate Brandner-Weiss, who is dealing with the subject of repository at the Waldviertler EnergieStammtisch, also criticizes the fact that the promised Czech law to involve the municipalities has not yet been passed and that those affected still have no party status . She also complains that the narrowing down from nine to four site candidates was not transparent and difficult to argue because there were hardly any (geological) studies.
In 2017, the German Ecology Institute prepared a study on behalf of Upper and Lower Austria. It says that the Czech Republic cites Scandinavian projects as a model for its repository in the crystalline host rock, but instead of the copper containers planned there, it wants to adopt steel-based container technology from Switzerland, which is intended for storage in clay rock. What that means for long-term safety is unclear. In addition, the Czech Republic works too much with “near-surface knowledge, generic assumptions and non-local analogy conclusions” and too little with direct investigations, it says.
It is precisely on these points that the Austrian position could be aimed in a cross-border strategic environmental assessment, in which, according to the Upper Austrian environmental councilor Stefan Kaineder (Greens), one wants to get involved. He criticizes the fact that the Czech Republic is using the current discussion about the EU taxonomy to push for the expansion of nuclear power. The search for a repository makes it clear that nuclear power is hardly clean energy. “Nuclear power has been generated in the Czech Republic since the 1980s and since then there has been no solution for the highly hazardous waste that has been produced. As long as the decision to phase out nuclear power has not been made, we will not agree to the search for a repository,” emphasizes Kaineder. “Every commercial enterprise has to prove how the waste is actually treated. When it comes to the highly radioactive nuclear waste, which will be a heavy burden for the next 30,000 generations, people turn a blind eye and half-silver concepts for 2050 are enough to get the ‘sustainable’ stamp,” he fears the Green Deal could become a “dirty deal”.
Even if Austria follows a very strict anti-nuclear course – there is also radioactive waste in this country, even if only lightly and moderately contaminated material from medicine and research. Anti-nuclear activist Schweiger criticizes the fact that Austria itself cannot produce a repository. The volume of “a larger event hall” would probably be necessary, as she says. According to the Ministry of Climate Protection, around 300 tons of radioactive waste accumulates every year and is stored in the Seibersdorf interim storage facility.