KONRAD Coordination Office

In 2010, EWN began to build up the KONRAD Coordination Office. Its task is the final storage management for all radioactive waste which already exists and that which accumulates in course of EWN Group dismantling activities.
In 2015, the status of a coordination office was also bestowed on EWN by the other publicly financed waste disposal bodies.

The headquarters of the KONRAD Coordination Office is located in Karlsruhe on the premises of our subsidiary KTE.

Waste Quantities for KONRAD

The KONRAD repository for low and medium level radioactive waste in Germany is currently being built near Salzgitter under the federal state’s responsibility. Further information is available on the KONRAD final storage facility’s home page at www.endlager-konrad.de .

The final storage facility is approved for a quantity of 303,000 m³ of waste, whereby the specification of the volume relates to the volume of the outer packaging, the KONRAD containers and tanks. According to current plan figures for waste producers, this quantity is fully earmarked for the waste already produced in Germany and that still to be produced.

60% of waste comes out of nuclear power plants and the nuclear industry as well as approximately 37% from publicly financed facilities (large-scale research facilities and federal dismantling projects) and approximately 3% from regional collecting facilities.

Together with its subsidiaries KTE and JEN, EWN is responsible for approximately 88% of waste from publicly financed facilities. The remaining 12% are divided between the European Joint Research Centre in Karlsruhe and other federal research Institutes.

Principle of Coordinated Planning and Delivery

Overall, there are more than 60 sites or deliverers in Germany which have to deliver their waste to the KONRAD final storage facility. Due to the large number of ancillary conditions to be observed during delivery, starting with the accessibility of the waste in each interim storage facility, combined with the site-specific selection of the means of transport and the respective duration of transport to the extensive ancillary conditions at the final storage location itself, the federal government and deliverers are agreed that delivery must take place via coordination offices.

The principle is explained in the following graphic:

Tasks of the KONRAD Coordination Office

• Active promotion of the exchange of experience between public institutions obliged to deliver waste
• The setting up of working groups on repository-related topics
• Derivation of synergy potential
• Development and implementation of acceleration measures to increase the number of approved waste packages
• Conducting of higher-level conversations on the topic of transport planning and processing with the final storage facility operator 
• Development of the EPALKO software (KONRAD storage planning and delivery logistics) for the planning and delivery of waste from public authorities
• Compilation of the transport logistics concept for publicly funded sites  
• Development of transport equipment to be used jointly
• The central contact for the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Conservation, Construction and Reactor Safety (BMUB), the Federal Office for Safe Nuclear Disposal (BfE) and the Federal Office for Final Storage (BGE mbH)