Clay, salt or granite - what to do with the nuclear waste?

earthquake-proof, it must be well shielded: The future nuclear waste Repository. Today, the Federal government informed about the sorts of places. The most important question: clay, salt or granite?

By Werner Eckert, ARD-environmental expert

Three times the amount of all the gold that has been mined in the history of mankind. Or ten large Olympic swimming pools full. 30,000 cubic meters - so a lot of high level radioactive waste must be disposed of by Germany, and for many thousands of years of safe storage. The tax is: EUR 7.7 billion were estimated to Federal authorities years ago, alone for Gorleben.

The search for a final Repository for the highly radioactive and heat-generating nuclear waste from German nuclear power plants has begun two years ago. But this time in a transparent and scientific criteria, has promised the Federal government. And not, as in the year 1977, as the Federal government and the state of lower Saxony agreed without a great test to Gorleben, just because it was in a sparsely populated area and close to the former GDR.

Enormous quantities of nuclear waste have accumulated in Germany.

But the Plan was laid with the site selection act of 2013 ad acta. Since then, the following applies: will be searched on a "white map" - there are no Preconditions except for the geophysical Suitability. What this means is 2017 in a further law: the "law on the further development of the law on search and selection of a site for a Repository for heat-generating radioactive waste, and other laws".

There it says: "For the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the host rocks of rock salt, Clay and crystalline rock." A whole range of exclusion criteria are as set earthquake risk. The layers of rock should not be perforated by mining or geothermal energy. You must have a certain thickness, and the garbage is supposed to be for 500 years, retrievable, if there are still problems or new scientific methods are invented. In addition, is exactly how the Public is informed and involved in, and that decision is sought to 2031.