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The German cabinet has agreed to grant compensation of up to EUR1 billion (USD1.17 billion) to the utilities forced to shut down their nuclear power plants by the Energiewende, or energy transition, that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel introduced in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan in March 2011. At that time, Germany was obtaining around a quarter of its electricity from 17 nuclear reactors operated by EOn, RWE and Vattenfall.

A new process for the chemical decontamination of the reactor cooling system and subsystems in nuclear power plants has been developed by Germany's Siempelkamp NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH. The procedure - which took four years to develop - has been successfully demonstrated in a German nuclear power plant.

German utility PreussenElektra has announced that the decommissioning and dismantling of the Unterweser nuclear power plant can now start, following approval from the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Environment, ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß, Building and Climate Protection. The approval is pursuant to Section 7 (3) of Germany's Atomic ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß Act.

PreussenElektra has awarded a major decommissioning contract to ZerKon, a consortium of GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service, Westinghouse Electric Germany and Westinghouse Electric Sweden. The contract covers the dismantling and packaging of reactor pressure vessel internals in six nuclear power plants that are scheduled for dismantling.

The Gundremmingen B boiling water reactor in southern Germany was disconnected from the grid on 31 December after 33 years of operation. The government had ordered the plant to close by the end of last year as part of the country's energy transition.

Germany's Energiewende policy has made things worse for the climate by shutting down carbon-free nuclear capacity and locking in the dependency on coal burning for decades, despite hundreds of billions in investments and subsidy-schemes. This is the conclusion of the European Climate Leadership Report 2017, Measuring the Metrics that Matter published last week in Bonn, Germany, at Conference of the Parties 23 by the NGO ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß for Humanity.

RecentÌýInternational Atomic ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß Agency missions have found commitment to safety by France's nuclear safety regulator and the operator of a Norwegian research reactor. The agency, which last week concluded a nuclear security advisory mission to Germany, also said Poland is committed to the safe management of radioactive waste.

Vattenfall has awarded a contract to dismantle and package the reactor pressure vessel internals of the Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant in Germany to the Areva-EWN Consortium. The work should be completed by 2020.

Germany's tax on nuclear fuel is "unconstitutional and void", the country's highest court has ruled. German utilities may stand to be reimbursed some €6.3 billion ($7.1 billion) they paid between 2011 and 2016 as a result of the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling.

Despite Germany choosing to phase out its use of nuclear energy, the country must not lose its nuclear expertise, research and industry, writes Ralf Güldner.

Germany is offering a great opportunity for new suppliers of decommissioning services because over the next five years all of its shutdown nuclear power plants will enter the decommissioning phase, Jörg Klasen, director of nuclear decommissioning services at EnBW, said yesterday. Klasen spoke at the 8th Annual Nuclear Decommissioning & Waste Management Conference Europe 2017 being held in Manchester, England. Asked where they see the biggest opportunities in nuclear decommissioning and waste management over the next five years, 57% of the conference delegates selected Germany. The UK, France, Sweden and Switzerland followed with 30%, 6%, 2% and 2%, respectively.

The German government has reached an agreement with GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service mbH on transferring GNS's interim storage activities. Under legislation that came into force last December, the government assumed responsibility for the intermediate storage and final disposal of the country's radioactive waste.