On Tuesday morning, a ship carrying seven Castor containers filled with highly radioactive nuclear waste arrived at the port of Nordenham in Lower Saxony, Germany.

The shipment, which originated from Sellafield, a nuclear reprocessing facility in northwest England, is destined for a temporary storage site in Niederaichbach, Bavaria.

The containers departed Barrow-in-Furness, England, the previous Wednesday and will be transferred from the vessel to a train in Nordenham before continuing their journey south.

Each Castor container measures approximately four meters (13 feet) in length and weighs over 100 tons.

Upon arrival, the first container was lifted off the transport ship, the 'Pacific Grebe', by a large crane for inspection.

This inspection included measuring radiation levels to ensure they were consistent with those recorded at Sellafield.

The port area in Nordenham has been sealed off and is under heavy police protection.

So far, there have been no reported incidents, although several protests by anti-nuclear groups have taken place in the vicinity of the port.

Activists from the group Ausgestrahlt voiced their concerns, with spokesperson Helge Bauer stating, 'Every Castor container carries enormous risk.

Nuclear waste should, therefore, only be transported once — to a permanent storage site.' Further demonstrations are scheduled along the anticipated train route, including cities like Bremen and Göttingen.

Kerstin Rudek, a representative of the protest group Castor-Stoppen, emphasized that moving the nuclear waste does not resolve the underlying issue of where it should be stored permanently.

Germany, which has been phasing out nuclear energy since 2003, accelerated this process following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The last remaining nuclear power plants in the country were shut down in 2023. Nevertheless, Germany remains obligated to repatriate nuclear waste from reprocessing that occurred at facilities such as Sellafield and La Hague in France.

Historically, the transport of processed nuclear waste back to Germany has faced significant public opposition.

Between 1995 and 2011, over 100 Castor containers were returned to Gorleben, Lower Saxony, while the last four made their way to Philippsburg, Baden-Württemberg, in 2024. In 2020, six containers were transported from Sellafield to Biblis, Hesse.

Currently, seven additional containers are expected to arrive following this latest transport.

The Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) is working towards identifying a permanent underground site for the long-term storage of approximately 27,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste generated over the last 60 years of nuclear energy production in Germany.

This waste, which can remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years, is temporarily stored at 16 above-ground locations, but long-term solutions are urgently required.

Lisa Seidel from the BGE stated that the agency is employing an empirical process to find a location that offers optimal security.