GRS resists Gabriel pressure to rank older reactors as less safe

London (Platts)--30Jan2006

The German federal government's prime nuclear safety consultant is resisting
political pressure from regulator Sigmar Gabriel to rank older reactors slated
for shutdown under Germany's phase-out as less safe than newer units,
Nucleonics Week has learned. 

Gesellschaft fuer Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit mbH (GRS) has told Gabriel,
as it responded to the same demand from his predecessor Juergen Trittin last
year, that all 17 German reactors meet safety standards and ranking is not
justified.

Gabriel is chief nuclear regulator, head of the Federal Ministry of
Environment & Nuclear Safety (BMU), and a politician from the formally
antinuclear Social Democratic Party (SPD). Last week Gabriel said he opposed
utilities' plans to request life extensions for the four reactors. Gabriel
said they were Germany's oldest and therefore its least safe units (NW, 19
Jan., 1).

Gabriel, like Trittin, tried to get GRS to rank the reactors by their safety,
sources said. Both Gabriel and Trittin, the architect of the phase-out, wanted
the rankings as support for keeping the phase-out schedule on course. However,
GRS has told Gabriel?as it did Trittin last year?that there is no difference
in safety among the units, sources said.

The oldest units are Biblis-A and -B, Neckarwestheim-1, and Brunsbuettel,
representing about 4,000 megawatts of installed generating capacity. All four
units are likely to produce the remaining kilowatt-hours (KWH) they are
allowed under the phase-out within the next four years.

In 2005, Trittin, then BMU head and a leading Green politician, commissioned a
study from GRS that was intended to compare the safety of all 17 operating
German LWRs. At the time, sources said last week, BMU sought ammunition from
technical experts to resist pressure from reactor owners to extend lifetimes
of reactors next on the shutdown schedule. Pressure on Trittin's SPD-Green
government to reverse the phase-out had mounted as the country headed toward
an election last fall.

GRS reported to Trittin last year that all operating German power reactors
meet current technical safety standards and that a comparison of the units was
not justified, according to well-placed sources. The report has not been
released publicly.

Trittin told GRS that he "wanted a listing or ranking of all the reactors from
most safe to least safe," one German expert said. GRS told Trittin such a
ranking "made no sense on technical grounds. Either a reactor meets the
technical standards or it doesn't," the source said.

According to sources, Trittin then refused to pay GRS for its work on the
report.

GRS declined to comment on the study Jan. 24. Reactor safety studies GRS
carries out for BMU that are not made public are proprietary and may also be
subject to a government security classification, officials said.

The full story was published in Platts Nucleonics Week at
http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/

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