Nukem

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Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 38.5 "  N , 9 ° 2 ′ 57.4"  E

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The Nukem GmbH is a German company in the field of nuclear technology .

history

Until mid-2006, it was a company of the RWE Group as RWE Nukem through its parent company at the time, RWE Solutions . After the sale of the RWE Solutions Group to the financial investor Advent International , the name was changed to Nukem . Nukem stands for nuclear chemistry and metallurgy.

The company was originally based in Hanau , where the main competence was in the production of fuel elements . This operation has now been closed and - apart from soil remediation measures - completely dismantled. Since then, Nukem has been split into two organizational and legal areas:

  • Nukem Technologies : decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear facilities, and
  • Nukem : trading in nuclear fuel and special stable (non-radioactive) isotopes (e.g. 10 B, 11 B, D 2 O , DZO , 17 O)

The former subsidiaries in the USA, Nukem Corp., and in Great Britain, Nukem Ltd., were sold to Energysolutions and Freyssinet (a subsidiary of the Vinci Group), respectively . In December 2009, Nukem Technologies GmbH was taken over by the Russian nuclear power plant manufacturer Atomstroiexport for 23.5 million euros. In the final report of the Asse Inventory Working Group , however, it is stated that there is no longer any clear legal successor for investigations into the storage of the Nukem in the Asse mine .

The German Nukem Energy GmbH was taken over by the Canadian Cameco Corporation in January 2013 .

Nukem and Transnuclear nuclear storage scandal

The division of labor implemented at the end of the 1960s provided for NUKEM to produce fuel elements for research reactors . The NUKEM subsidiaries Alkem and RBU were responsible for the production of uranium fuel elements for light water reactors (RBU) and MOX fuel elements for light water reactors and breeders .

In March 1987, as a result of an investigation in the Transnuklear Hanau (TNH) facility, irregularities in the radioactive waste department were revealed . Nukem was involved in this scandal at its subsidiary.

On July 1, 1987, Nukem shut down parts of its facility, drawing the first conclusions from the safety concerns raised by the Hessian Environment Minister Karlheinz Weimar (CDU). On July 9, 1987, Weimar gave Nukem a list of deficiencies that the company was supposed to remedy immediately.

On September 17, 1987, Nukem resumed operations with the approval of the Environment Minister. On December 17, 1987, Federal Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer (CDU) withdrew its license to transport radioactive waste from the Nukem subsidiary Transnuklear due to bribery that had become known. On December 16, 1987, it was announced that Transnuklear had illegally brought barrels with highly radioactive contents to Germany from the Kernforschungszentrum ( Study Center for Nuclear Energy ) in Mol , Belgium. At the end of December 1987, the company spokesman announced that these were 1,942 barrels, most of which are located at nuclear power plant locations . As a consequence, the Hessian state government demanded a leave of absence for the members of the management board Peter Jelinek-Fink and Karl-Gerhard Hackstein .

This was followed by a report by a journalist in January 1988 alleging that enriched fissile material had been transported from holdings of the Nukem to Libya or Pakistan .

On January 14, 1988, the Federal Environment Ministry suspended the operating license for Nukem because of the unauthorized storage of nuclear waste drums with high proportions of cesium-135 , cobalt-60 and plutonium and the considerable doubts about the reliability of the company required by nuclear law. Afterwards there were allegations that Nukem had knowledge of illegal practices of the subsidiary Transnuklear, including the wrongly declared transport of nuclear waste between Mol in Belgium and Germany and the payment of DM 21 million in bribes.

After these allegations could be refuted, rehabilitation for Jelinek-Fink and Hackstein took place on May 18, 1988 . After that, Jelinek-Fink stopped working at Nukem. As a result, he took over the management of Urenco's Washington liaison office in 1988 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian nuclear power plant builder takes over German nuclear company NUKEM Technologies . RIA Novosti . December 14, 2009. Retrieved December 15, 2009.
  2. ↑ Russia gets know-how to dismantle nuclear power plants - "Kommersant" . RIA Novosti. December 25, 2009. Retrieved December 26, 2009.
  3. ↑ Helmholtz Zentrum München, PG Jülich: "AG Asse Inventory - Final Report", Helmholtz Zentrum München German Research Center for Health and Environment Jülich Project Group August 31, 2010, p. 18 online at Spiegel.de (PDF file; 1.0 MB)
  4. ^ Nuclear Forum Switzerland: Cameco: Nukem purchase completed on January 16, 2013
  5. ↑ Radkau / Hahn: Rise and Fall of the German Nuclear Industry, Munich 2013, p. 323.
  6. ↑ Ulrich Büdenbender, Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, Peter Rosin, Energierecht I, Recht der Energieanlagen, Berlin 1999, p. 396
  7. ↑ See nothing and notice nothing . In: The time . No. 01/1989 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Nukem manager back . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1988 ( online ).

literature

  • Klaus Traube, Tamara Duve , Helmut Hirsch: The nuclear scandal. Alkem, Nukem and the Consequences. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 978-3-499-12472-3 .
  • Manfred Stephany: On the history of NUKEM 1960-1987. Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2505-9 .

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