Britain and Germany have agreed to explore ways of sending 650 tonnes of unprocessed nuclear waste back to Germany if Bonn presses ahead with plans to phase out nuclear power. Bonn has also tried to smooth over an ugly row which has broken out with France, which reprocesses many times more German waste than Britain and whose Cogema plant relies heavily on the German business.
A meeting between British Trade Secretary Mr Stephen Byers and German environment minister Mr Jurgen Trittin of the Green Party yesterday failed to resolve the issue of compensation for British Nuclear Fuels, which stands to lose £1.2 billion of business if Germany scraps existing reprocessing contracts.
Mr Trittin has said he plans to phase out Germany's 19 nuclear reactors and ban German firms from sending nuclear waste abroad for reprocessing, starting from next January. He said in recent days there was no case for compensation for cancelled contracts, but declined to comment on the issue again. Mr Byers and Mr Trittin agreed to set up a working group of British and German officials to discuss how best to send the spent nuclear fuel awaiting reprocessing at the Sellafield site in Cumbria back to Germany.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, visiting France yesterday, said he wanted to solve the row in a pragmatic and friendly way and the establishment of a another joint working group there was the best way forward. He told members of France's National Assembly's foreign affairs committee the issue should not be allowed to damage Franco-German relations.
Mr Byers said Britain would not act as a storage depot for Germany if it tried to scrap the contracts. In a statement, he said while Germany's nuclear policy was a domestic matter, Britain's state-owned BNFL should not be made to suffer financially.
Mr Trittin said he was aware that the waste was Germany's problem. "It is our duty to take back all the nuclear waste we have exported to other countries," he said. "Germany is not interested in dumping waste in other countries." He said there were many technical problems in the transport and storage of waste which the working group would discuss.
BNFL has developed expertise in final storage of nuclear waste and political sources said winning a contract to advise Germany on this may comprise part of a compensation package.