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Berlin’s research reactor at the Hahn-Meitner Institute will be switched
on after all. After the collapse of the city’s Socialist-Green coalition
government in November, the new environmental senator, Klaus Meisner, overturned
his predecessor’s decision to refuse the reactor a licence to operate (see
This Week, 4 August 1990).

Meisner’s decision paves the way for the start-up of the reactor, which
was recently renovated at a cost of 170 million marks (54 million Pounds
(pds) and is to be used for materials research.

The former Green senator, Michaele Schreyer, refused to give the institute
a licence because it plans to dispose of the reactor’s spent uranium fuel
rods in Dounreay, Scotland, did not comply with Germany’s nuclear regulatory
laws.

Meisner overruled Schreyer’s decision after lawyers advised him that
it was based on ‘procedural and legally material errors’. Although Germany’s
environment minister, Klaus Topfer, demanded immediate licensing for the
reactor, officials at the institute say that they do not expect to be granted
a licence until March.