| | 8 JAN - FEB 2025AFTER SHUTDOWN, THE REAL CHALLENGE BEGINSIN MY OPINIONBy Souad Pederzani, Divisional Director Waste Management Center, GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-ServiceIn April 2023, the last three German nuclear power plants were taken off the grid. The decision to phase out nuclear energy, taken in the wake of the Fukushima accident, remains politically contentious today more than ever. The phase-out poses additional challenges for the national energy market's journey towards a carbon-neutral power supply. On the other hand, however, a globally unique waste management market has emerged around the simultaneous decommissioning of the entire German nuclear power plant park. GNS, as the joint waste management subsidiary of all German nuclear power plant operators, is active at all sites with its approximately 1,000 employees in a wide variety of trades and also supplies all the containers required up to and including final disposal."For the past 50 years, our company has exclusively operated in the field of nuclear waste management," explains Souad Pederzani, director of waste management centre at GNS. "While previously, our CASTOR® casks for highly radioactive spent fuel elements constituted the largest portion of GNS's business, the focus on the German domestic market is shifting towards the disposal of wastes from decommissioning now." Pederzani, a graduate chemist, has been with GNS since 2010 and now oversees all disposal projects for radioactive waste from the public sector and primarily from the energy industry ­ currently about 500 projects. Pederzani states, "During their operation, nuclear power plants generate only small quantities of radioactive waste; the significant volumes accrue during the decommissioning of the facilities." Souad Pederzani
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