On Wednesday, November 26, all parliamentary groups and Lord Mayor Frank Klingebiel therefore unanimously adopted a corresponding resolution at the council meeting.

Those responsible for nuclear waste in Berlin are called upon to include Schacht Konrad in the repository search procedure and to carry out a comprehensive reassessment according to the current state of science and technology. Furthermore, it is demanded that no attempt be made to expand the Konrad project without including the repository search procedure and carrying out a reassessment. In addition, according to Klingebiel and the Council, there should be no changes to the operating license, but rather a halt to the Konrad preparations.

According to the current state of science and technology, the Konrad mine can be ruled out as a storage site for nuclear waste from the outset, as Konrad (a former extraction mine) is located in a water-bearing layer and is not designed to be retrievable.

In addition, the state government of Lower Saxony should support the demands made of the federal government and demand that the federal government reassess the Konrad repository as stipulated in the red-green coalition agreement.

In view of the lack of transparency surrounding the quantities of nuclear waste and the associated question of where they should be disposed of, the Salzgitter City Council feels confirmed in the opinion it has held for years that Salzgitter is being used by the federal government as the only option for solving the repository problem and that it is not showing the courage and necessary consistency for a holistic solution scenario.

The Entsorgungsnachweis already provides for the possibility of tackling the problem of additional storage capacities only after the commissioning of the Konrad mine in order to prevent a new planning approval procedure for the Konrad mine. This is based on the view that by shifting responsibility to the Federal Office for Nuclear Waste Management, it will be able to regulate an increase in capacity under its own jurisdiction.

Such an approach reveals the fear of having to give up Konrad as a final repository in the event of a reassessment and being left empty-handed due to decades of failures in nuclear waste disposal policy. However, it also justifies the concerns of the population that, for tactical reasons, the plans are not being put on the table in advance in order to prevent them from being examined in a new planning approval procedure.

Background:

The valid permit from the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Environment for the storage of low- and medium-level radioactive nuclear waste in Schacht Konrad dates back to 2002 and covers 303,000 cubic meters.

The Federal Government's National Waste Disposal Program of 11 September provides for an expansion of the storage volume from the approved 303,000 to around 600,000 cubic meters after the Konrad mine is commissioned, in order to be able to store waste retrieved from Asse II and depleted uranium from uranium enrichment in Konrad.