Federal Administrative Court Rejects BUND Lawsuit Against Demolition Permit for Biblis Nuclear Power Plant

According to the operator's own estimates, approximately one million tons of debris and scrap metal are expected from the demolition. However, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that the demolition permit does not need to specify where individual components or materials with certain radiation values will eventually go. Questions regarding the release of such substances are examined in a separate radiation protection procedure, as explicitly provided for by the legislator, according to the court.

Status of Decommissioning in Biblis

The applicant, the then-operator RWE Power AG, had submitted the application for the decommissioning and dismantling of the affected plant components. Demolition work has already been underway for several years. According to the court, all cooling towers of the facility have now completely disappeared. For decades, the Biblis nuclear power plant was the only nuclear power plant in Hesse; the two pressurized water reactors of Blocks A and B went online in 1974 and 1976.

According to the court, the permit covers the partial demolition of the power plant, but not the reactor pressure vessel and certain safety-relevant facilities. Highly radioactive waste continues to be stored in Castor casks in an interim storage facility on the premises. A final solution for the disposal of this waste does not yet exist. The judges also pointed out that the dispute ultimately concerns questions that would have to be clarified in any case within a separate radiation protection legal procedure.

What the Ruling Leaves Open

Among other things, the environmental organization BUND Hessen had argued in the proceedings that the environmental impact assessment did not adequately reflect the risks. The Federal Administrative Court did not follow this reasoning and confirmed the Hessian permit as lawful. This legally clears the way for the continuation of the partial demolition of Block A, which is already in progress.

The ruling is likely to have a signaling effect for similar procedures concerning the decommissioning of other shut-down nuclear power plants in Germany. Following Fukushima, the federal government decided to phase out nuclear energy, and numerous reactors have been permanently shut down since then. Decommissioning generates large quantities of material with varying degrees of contamination, the disposal of which is not yet definitively regulated in many cases.

However, the dispute over the Hessian demolition permit is not necessarily over with the decision from Leipzig: Should the radiation protection procedure later object to certain release values, new points of contention could arise. Observers also expect that the discussion about the final disposal of highly radioactive waste in Germany will outlast the Biblis issue.