(351.3485) WISE Amsterdam - Originally, the governments of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands made the decision to build Kalkar because of a belief in the 1960s in the growing nuclear capacity and their conviction that nuclear energy had a future but that supply of uranium could be a problem. A fast breeder reactor could breed its own fuel and would therefore provide the perfect solution to that problem. Or so they thought. But nuclear power didn't develop as planned, nor was the development and research on fast breeder reactors as flourishing as expected.
Opposition to the project was very strong from the beginning, especially in the Netherlands. This was mostly because of the dangers posed by the technology involved. However, a number of political parties that were not opposed to nuclear energy in itself joined in opposition as well. Their objection was to the military aspects (the production of plutonium). When the Dutch government decided in the early 1970s to add and extra 3% to people's electricity bills to finance the project, resistance grew tremendously: thousands of people refused to pay the 3% and that was the beginning of a large anti-nuclear power movement in the Netherlands. The first demon-stration against Kalkar, in 1974, was primarily a Dutch demonstration. Opposition in Germany itself came after that. Opposition in Belgium was never strong.
Now that the decision not to open the plant has been made, the Dutch and Belgium governments hope to get some of the money they spent on it back. That, however, is not likely to happen.
How the project partners plan to deal with the reactor is uncertain. Of course, the sodium and the plutonium (1240 kilograms) will be removed, but it is not clear what will happen with it, nor is it clear what will be done with the building itself. There seems to have been a secret agreement made that in case the project was cancelled, the plutonium was to be returned to the country from which it came. For the Nether-lands, that would mean having to take back 60 kgs of the stuff. If, in fact, such an agreement exists -- and is fulfilled -- the Dutch government has a problem: what to do with the plutonium, as there are no proper storage facilities. Because of the embarrassment this will mean for the Dutch authorities, they may search for and find another solution. Regarding this problem, Andrew Munn of the British Atomic Energy Agency had been in contact with German authorities even before the official announcement about Kalkar to discuss using the plutonium in the research breeder reactor at Dounreay in Scotland. The amount of fuel from Kalkar is enough to keep Dounreay going another four years. There have as yet been no official negotiations. (Elbe Jeetzel Zeitung, 23 Jan. 1991)
It is obvious why the German federal government made the decision to cancel Kalkar. Because construction took so long (it was begun in April 1973!), much of the technical and safety standards are outdated, and the costs for maintenance and surveillance are 100 million DM (approximately US $70 million) each year. In addition, Kalkar was one of the main focal points for resistance against nuclear power in Germany in the '70s and '80s. The last few years have been relatively quiet, but this was mostly because the fight against Kalkar had been won. The last mass demonstration was in 1982, and although there followed a few smaller actions -- such as the demonstration of dissident members from the Christian Democratic Union (conservative party), which was nevertheless important because it showed how wide-spread opposition to Kalkar was -- people felt no need for further actions on such a large scale. It was also well known that there was opposition from sectors in the electricity production companies which weren't all that happy with Kalkar over the last years. That, and the opposition of the population, made it almost impossible to start operation. The federal government was left with no alternative but to stop the project, making it the second of large German nuclear power project to have been stopped by opposition. The first was the reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf which was stopped in April 1989.
An important reason as to why these two projects were cancelled lies in the desire of the German government and industry to hold the option of nuclear energy open for the near future. At Wackersdorf that strategy worked: the anti-nuclear power movement was very strong at the time of the decision to cancel Wackersdorf, but it was focused almost entirely on the reprocessing plant. After the cancellation, the movement fell apart. The case of Kalkar is different. While there was no massive movement with Kalkar as its focus at the time of its cancellation, the plant was a monument to resistance, and thus retained the potential for becoming a rallying point. With its cancellation, there are no longer any important facilities under construction which could serve as a focal point for what is left of the German anti-nuclear power movement of the '70s and '80s. The other facilities important to the movement during those two decades, the Brokdorf and Grohnde reactors, have already been in operation for years and there is not much resistance against them anymore.
An exception to this could be the waste storage facility at Gorleben. With Gorleben, however, the government has no choice but to continue. The facility is vital to continuation of Germany's nuclear energy program. If the storage of the radio-active waste is found to be impossible (technologically and/or politically), the fairy tale of clean and environmentally friendly nuclear energy is exposed for what it really is and therefore no longer credible.
Meanwhile, though it has cancelled Kalkar, it is not true that Germany has given up the option of fast breeder reactors: in cooperation with France and Great Britain, Germany is working on the next generation of breeders. The location for the prototype will be chosen in 1992. It's not likely that it will be Germany that is chosen. But this, along with an examination of the reasons for Kalkar's cancellation, makes clear that the Kalkar decision is not necessarily as important as it looks. It's no policy change, to be sure. Merely a strategic maneuver to ensure the future of nuclear power in the German republic: already plans are being discussed to build two new reactors in the former GDR.
Source and contact: Dirk Bannink, LAKA, Pesthuislaan 118, 1054 RM Amsterdam, the Netherlands, tel: +31-20-6168294.
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