Morsleben radioactive waste repository

The Morsleben Radioactive Waste Repository (German: Endlager für radioaktive Abfälle Morsleben-ERAM) is a deep geological repository for radioactive waste in the Bartensleben rock salt mine in Morsleben, Börde District, in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

After closure of the salt mining activities, Bartensleben was designated as a repository for radioactive waste by the former government of East Germany.

These deposits were made due to economic considerations ahead of the conversion operations (deployment authorization of 1974) of the salt mine as a disposal site.

In the late 1980s the preparations started for an additional approval stage for the storage of high level radioactive waste.

In the first storage period from 1971 to February 1991, approximately 14,432 cubic meters of intermediate- and low level radioactive waste and 6,227 sealed objects with a total activity of about 0.29 PBq were stored.

[1] Altogether, up to the termination of the storage operation in 1998 (including the period before reunification) at least 36,753 m³ of low and intermediate level radioactive waste was stored in Morsleben.

The request on October 13, 1992 from Saxony-Anhalt's Ministry of Environment to initiate a planning process under § 9 b AtG for the continued operation of the site from June 30, 2000 onwards was limited on May 9, 1997 to a decommissioning of the Morsleben repository.

The Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz notified the planning authority on April 17, 2001 that it irrevocably waived approval of the regulations that permit the continued use of the site and acceptance of other radioactive waste and their storage in the Morsleben repository.

Since the suspension of nuclear waste storage in Morsleben in 1998 the stability of the salt domes has deteriorated to a state in which collapse could occur.