The constitutionality of the Atomic Energy Act judged from the angle of the waste management issue

The spent nuclear fuels currently accrued can be reprocessed either in Great Britain or in France, or they can be temporarily stored on site or away from reactor, at intermediate storage facilities. Taking into account these available waste management capacities, the state's protective duties cannot be construed to deliver reason to deny already now any operating permits for new nuclear installations on the grounds that there is at present no radwaste repository in the meaning of the law available. Such an interpretation of the constitutional protective duties of the state forgets that the legislator, in designing the Atomic Energy Act, has left ample room for constituitive decisions, as well as a discretionary prerogative. This implies that the objects of legal protection mentioned in Art. 2 para. 2, sentence 1 GG, and the protective duties of the state given in Art. 20 lit. a GG would be affected or violated only if the nuclear waste management policy of the Federal Government would be based on completely uncertain or false data and material. There are no reasons indicating the possibility of such legal defects. (orig.)