"Appeal from the region"

People demonstrate against storage in the Konrad mine.

For this reason, representatives of the affected municipalities and members of parliament agreed on a joint regional approach in Salzgitter on October 16.

This "Appeal of the Region" will be adopted in the various local parliaments in December. In Salzgitter, this was done at the council meeting on December 1. It was triggered by the German government's lack of transparency in dealing with the future task of "disposal and storage of nuclear waste" when drawing up the so-called National Waste Management Program (NaPro).

Back in spring 2015, around 70,000 people signed the objection "Stop Konrad - instead of expanding". The campaign alliance consisting of AG Schacht Konrad, IG Metall, Landvolk Braunschweiger Land and the city of Salzgitter called for this, demanding in particular that Konrad be reassessed as quickly as possible and in concrete terms.

At the end of May 2015, the signatures were publicly handed over to the Federal Ministry for the Environment in Berlin. The "Appeal of the Region" is now being used to promote a further activity that demonstrates the cohesion of the local authorities and is intended to bring about a grassroots response from the elected representatives in Berlin.

Appeal from the region

"According to the current state of science and technology, the Konrad mine is ruled out as a storage site for nuclear waste! This is because the shaft is a former extraction mine, is located in a water-bearing layer and is not designed to be retrievable. No alternative sites for the disposal of so-called low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste have been examined for Konrad.

Site selection criteria have not yet been defined. The Site Selection Act could make up for these omissions. It implicitly refers to all types of radioactive waste but, quite incomprehensibly, is not to be applied to the Konrad mine.

Against this background, we as a region demand that the Federal Government

The permanent binding exclusion of an expansion of the Konrad mine.
A comprehensive reassessment of the Konrad mine in accordance with the current state of science and technology, including the safety calculations and analyses that are more than 25 years old.
The consideration of an option for the retrievability of all nuclear waste to be disposed of, which is not given at the Konrad mine.
The revision of the Konrad transport study for a realistic and up-to-date assessment of transport risks, including the possible effects of transport accidents.

We expect the state government of Lower Saxony to support these demands to the federal government and to demand that the federal government reassess the Konrad mine project as stipulated in the coalition agreement. Furthermore, it is responsible for reviewing and complying with the state of the art in science and technology as stipulated in the approval of the Konrad mine.

All local authorities in the region welcome the declarations of intent by Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks to refrain from expanding capacity. On the other hand, the restrictive wording chosen once again feeds doubt and uncertainty among the population of our region with regard to the continuation of the Konrad mine project, especially as it is only a question of expanding capacity and not of reassessing the entire project.

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

Against this backdrop, we also stand by our general rejection of the final disposal of nuclear waste in the Konrad mine and are committed to a regionally coordinated approach.

We will keep our residents informed about the current status of the procedure. The members of the federal and state parliaments elected in the region are strongly expected to actively support the aforementioned demands."

Data protection settings

Salzgitter

Region against nuclear waste policy

Appeal from the region