Storage of nuclear waste: Gorleben is filled in

Decades of dispute, decades of protest: Gorleben was ruled out a year ago as a site for a nuclear repository. The Federal Environment Ministry has now announced the final closure of the mine.

The mine in Gorleben in Lower Saxony, which was previously considered a potential nuclear waste repository, will be closed for good. The Federal Environment Ministry announced. The ministry has now decided to commission the Federal Association for Final Storage (BGE) “to decommission the mine”. The mine should be backfilled. “The Gorleben mine is now to be shut down and the salt dump is to be brought underground again – it is now up to the BGE to continue planning the closure.”

Decades of protest

Despite violent protests, the mine in Wendland, Lower Saxony, had been viewed for decades as a possible future repository for German highly radioactive nuclear waste and researched accordingly. In the course of a restart of the Federal German repository search, the mine was finally removed from the list of potential sites last year due to doubts about the geological suitability of the site that could not be cleared.

Even before the decision was made, the mine had only been in a kind of hibernation for years. All exploration work has been suspended since 2013, and the technology and buildings that are no longer required have been gradually removed.

Hardly any alternative uses

Only the facilities required to keep the former mine open were to remain in place until a final decision about the future of the site was made. This fell now. However, it was already largely clear in advance that the former exploratory mine would hardly have any alternative uses. “The Gorleben repository chapter will be closed as of today – I hope that the wounds in Wendland can now heal that the decades-long dispute over Gorleben has torn,” said Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment.