Resistance in the area of Lüchow-Dannenberg has contributed to the success: 40 years after Gorleben was designated a site for a Nuclear Waste Management Centre, the search for a repository for high-level radioactive waste is facing a new start. The tasks and challenges ahead are demanding – but they are also accompanied by a number of important settings of the course and are thus not unsolvable.

On the one hand, the phase-out of nuclear energy, which was decided with a broad political majority, has significantly alleviated the debate about radioactive waste management. On the other hand, the legislator has established clear structures and has put financing on new footing. Having been the operator of the repository projects since 1999, I have been committed to continue in this direction since 1999.

Currently we are facing an amendment to the Repository Site Selection Act. All these decisions have created a basis which, for the first time, provides the opportunity to solve the conflict that has been going on for decades.

The goal “repository site” as public responsibility

Regarding the search for a repository for high-level radioactive wastes we need to adapt to a long road at the end of which there must be a site for the safe storage of high-level radioactive wastes.

Our society must not avoid its responsibility for cost reasons and for fear of making unfavourable decisions. Taking wastes abroad or permanently storing them on the surface is a non-calculable security risk, not least in view of instable political situations. Because we need a solution that provides security not only for decades but for many thousand years.

Opportunity for a fair and comprehensible procedure

In the light of my own experiences in the field of radioactive waste disposal, I know that it is highly unlikely to achieve a complete consensus about a site. However, a search procedure including a comparison of different options, at the end of which the best possible site will be selected with participation of the public, provides the opportunity for a fair and comprehensible procedure. Only a fair procedure can serve as the basis for decisions made in the public interest are supported by the public.

Including the Gorleben site

Despite of all mistakes of the past, including the Gorleben site in the upcoming search procedure is correct and at the same time the logical conclusion from the mistakes made in the past. Because the crucial point is that today sites are evaluated for their suitability according to previously established criteria and not in accordance with what is politically expedient. Regarding the site selection, this was obviously not the case for Gorleben in the past.

However, excluding Gorleben without evaluation procedure, would now poison the debate about every other possible site in Germany. For the people would have every right to ask why Gorleben has been excluded and other sites have been included in the procedure.

Realising disposal at the best possible site in the Federal Republic of Germany

We need an open-ended process ensuring that we realise disposal at the best possible site in the Federal Republic of Germany and not only prepare the cheapest option in the literal sense: To transfer the nuclear wastes abroad.

In the next 40 years, the question is no longer to avoid but to select and commission a location in Germany where the relics of a failed technology development will be permanently stored safely in the public interest.