Countries are racing to build new reactors. But we've barely figured out how to clean up the old ones — and the bill is potentially staggering.Standing in a 1960s industrial building by the German Baltic Sea coast, Florian Grose, holds a dosimeter as he moves towards a corner of the room. It starts beeping furiously.

Also Read | Business News | Iran Attack Wipes out 17% of Qatar’s LNG Capacity for Up to Five Years; Estimated USD 20 Billion Loss in Annual Revenue: Report.

"That's around 10 microsieverts," he says, dressed in protective overalls. A normal dose rate is under 0.2 microsieverts. "This is an area where I'd say we maybe should move a meter away. You shouldn't stand or lie here for an hour," Grose, a radiation protection worker, warns in a disarmingly jovial tone.

Also Read | Business News | India to Safeguard Agriculture and Fisheries Interest at WTO Ministerial Conference in Cameroon.

Inside special building one of the former nuclear power plant, parts of the wall are uneven and pockmarked — the result of workers hammering off layers of concrete, hunting for radioactive contamination. It's been one of the "most difficult buildings to decontaminate and dismantle," explains Kurt Radlof, who handles communications for the plant.

His parents worked at the Soviet-era nuclear complex at Lubmin in former East Germany before it shuttered 35 years ago. Dismantling the facility was supposed to take about 20 years. It's still nowhere near finished and has become one of the world's most expensive civil decommissioning projects.

Nuclear power has existed for over 70 years. Still, out of more than 600 reactors ever built, only a third have been closed and 20 fully decommissioned. The current life span of a reactor is 30 to 40 years, and hundreds are heading into retirement.

Even though decommissioning is costly and complex, countries in Europe and around the globe are looking to revive the flagging industry to achieve energy independence, in the face of the latest energy crisis precipitated by the war in the Persian Gulf.

At a recent Nuclear Energy Summit, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe wanted to join the nuclear renaissance, citing the Iran war's energy vulnerabilities and nuclear power's ability to complement intermittent renewables.

Decommissioning a single reactor can cost up to $2 billion (€1.75 billion), according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While for some, this has been achieved within budget and timeline, it's far from a given.

Globally, even without significant cost overruns or taking new reactors into account, cleaning up shuttered plants could become a trillion-dollar problem, burdening taxpayers and future generations.

Lubmin's fall from nuclear grace

Lubmin was once the crown jewel of Soviet technology in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR). Chosen partly for its location on the country's northeastern edge with easy acess to the Baltic waters, needed for cooling its reactors, it was meant to supply around a quarter of the GDR's electricity needs.

But trouble at the plant started early. After about a year of operation, a fire broke out in one of the machine rooms, disrupting the cooling system essential for avoiding a meltdown. Further problems followed but weren't reported to the public.

Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, putting Germany on the path to reunification. For the first time, West German inspectors were allowed inside the plant to look at the reactors. And they did not like what they found.

Brittle pressure vessels built to house the nuclear cores and inadequate emergency cooling led the experts to deem the reactors unsafe. They ordered an immediate shutdown of all five. But that was not the end of the story.

How to decommission a nuclear plant

Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is not like demolishing an office block. It's a slow, painstaking, heavily regulated process that bears closer resemblance to surgery than construction.

The first step is removing the most radioactive parts: the fuel rods and everything around them. These go to the pools to cool. Because this high-level waste remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, it is then moved to storage. At Lubmin, that process alone took seven years.

Then the real work begins. Everything else — every pipe, cable, door and structural component — has to be measured for radioactivity and dismantled piece by piece. In the case of Lubmin, that means 330,000 tons of material.

Some contaminated components have to go to long-term, secure storage too, particularly the ones that sat closest to the nuclear fuel.

"It's put in interim storage where it then can be prepared for final, permanent storage," said Kurt Radloff.

Other components can be decontaminated, and after a series of checks, some can even be recycled.

When nuclear decommissioning doesn't go to plan

It is an enormously complex and time-consuming process even when things run smoothly. Even more so when they don't. Such as at Lubmin where Grose's dosimeter is beeping.

Radioactive water used during operations has seeped into cracks in the plaster, spreading contamination through the walls, which is a surprise for the cleanup crew.

"If there was a crack in the plaster somewhere, which probably wasn't uncommon back in 1990 — it seeped in and spread," Grose explains. Every affected surface has to be identified and removed.

Leaked contamination is also a problem with other old reactors. Changing safety standards, limited space for waste storage, technological complexity, funding gaps and public opposition often add to the costs and delays. At Lubmin, the original plan was to finish 10 years ago for around €1 billion. The current estimate is €10 billion, with completion expected in the mid-2040s.

Most countries require nuclear operators to set aside decommissioning funds in advance, but when that money falls short, governments and taxpayers step in.

What happens to the leftover nuclear waste?

Even after decommissioning, the waste still needs to exit. High and intermediate-level nuclear waste must go to permanent storage. But of the 31 countries currently producing nuclear power, only two are building permanent underground storage facilities. Germany doesn't have one yet.

Everything at Lubmin sits in an interim storage building, waiting for a permanent home. But finding a safe site to store nuclear waste in the long term is not easy. Radlof jokes that he likely won't live long enough to see the high-level waste put away for good, "unless medicine makes some very significant advances."

New reactors, including small modular reactors (SMRs), are being designed and built with decommissioning in mind. That includes more standardized components and modular structures that are theoretically easier to take apart.

But whether that will translate into shorter timelines or lower costs remains to be seen. None of those new reactors have been decommissioned and just two SMRs have been built at commercial scale.

The costs of not thinking about all that is clear. "The dismantling of the nuclear power plant wasn't really part of the original plan. They really didn't think about that during the planning stages of these power plants," said Radloff.

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

This article was adapted from a DW Planet A video by Jennifer Collins.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 19, 2026 08:20 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).