munich

Trittin: his attempts to block FRM II seem to have failed.

The German Social Democrats (SPD) last week blocked a move by the federal environment minister Jürgen Trittin, a leading member of the Greens, to stop the licensing of new research reactors with a thermal power of more than 1 MW.

Trittin had specifically called for the termination of the licensing procedure for FRM II, the 20-MW neutron source being built by the Technical University of Munich at Garching (see Nature 397, 92; 1999).

But the Greens and Social Democrats agreed during last week's coalition talks on nuclear policy to exclude research reactors from proposed legislation on the phasing out of nuclear power. They also agreed to set up an independent committee of scientific experts to reconsider whether the FRM II could be converted to use low enriched uranium (LEU).

The FRM II has been designed to burn weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), contravening a 1978 international anti-nuclear proliferation agreement. The decision not to block the licensing of such reactors was described as “a bitter pill” by Harald Händel, spokesman of the Green party's executive. Party leaders, he says, are aware that the grass roots will have little sympathy for the compromise: “but at the end of the day it was all that was possible politically.”

Wolf-Michael Catenhusen (SPD), secretary of state in the federal research ministry, welcomes the compromise, which, he says, “guarantees that Germany will be able to keep up its options in neutron research”. But he stresses that the political desire to convert the FRM II to use LEU remains.

The new committee will have until June to formulate recommendations about whether conversion is “technically and financially feasible”. The federal government will then discuss the reactor's final design with the Bavarian state government, which is responsible for issuing the operating licence.

The composition of the committee has not yet been decided. Catenhusen told Nature, however, that it will consist of prominent neutron researchers, including experts from the Technical University of Munich.

He says it will also include experts from the US Argonne National Laboratory, who last year published a report saying that they saw “no major technical issues regarding use of LEU fuel instead of HEU fuel in the FRM II”, and “that it is definitely feasible to use LEU fuel in the FRM II without compromising the safety or performance of the facility”.

Meanwhile, the Technical University of Munich is keen to present its critics with a fait accompli by ensuring that FRM II building work continues as fast as possible, daily increasing the costs of redesigning the reactor.

Armando Travelli, head of Argonne's reactor conversion programme, fears such costs could be “immense”, and that this could be used as an argument not to convert the reactor. But Catenhusen has indicated that the federal government would contribute to the conversion costs.