The our house interim stories sign germanys monster langridge and houses more than three hundred casks of highly Radioactive Nuclear waste the search is on for a permanent storage site that will be safe for a million use. Probably means there is no such place. If we believe in a completely safe final storage site with deceiving ourselves. Harm once weve taken on too much from weve taken on too much with this selfinflicted problems often. Its the start of the shift in the our house Nuclear Waste repository for power of all to man its a work place like any other. God my work is fun i get on well with my colleagues they do a great job i do a great job i feel safe here with the seans are. Told the man is a crane driver in hole eight he operates the overhead crane that can carry a load of hundred forty tons. Our radioactive legacy is stored in the eastern half of the whole three hundred and twenty nine casks filled with spent nuclear fuel. Among other things they contain plutonium and other trans uranium elements all radioactive some for millions of years seventy five percent of the german population believe this radioactive waste is already stored underground but it will be a long time before that happens. Site manager Marcus Werner and his colleagues here are the custodians of an elaborate provisional solution. But it will not. Be the central warehouses almost two hundred meters long and twenty meters high. Physicist Jacqueline Bartoli checks the measurements every day theyre lower than the typical dose rates on an average day in the center of munich eighty eight nine zero zero its power. The saturday thats very low the casks are in the storage area over there on the other side is industrial waste you can feel safe here. That causes a fair few if. These casks are considered the most stable waste receptacles in Human History unless we dont know whether theyre seals will hold for more than forty years but theyre associated with other dangers that dont originate in the warehouse. Our house is considered a potential terrorist target important aspects of the safeguarding and protection concepts are kept confidential the only thing we do know is that the facility has to be constantly updated and fixed gutters for jet fuel are going to be built here soon as its all in up to us and the potential scenario is the crash of a large passenger plane and we have to make sure that we dont have a long lasting kerosene fire in the depo so will channel the kerosene out of the depo to shorten the time of a fire inside. Of a course and. Another measure has been conceived to make the interim depo safer. An additional protective wall is to be erected around the building the maoists to the wall is aimed at dealing with newer threat scenarios and insights from federal and safety authorities regarding the impact of third parties on the storage site in fossil that means things like terrorist proofing and other scenarios were protests and not again. The operating permit for the interim Storage Facility runs out in twenty thirty six its already clear that it will have to be extended thats because nobody knows where to store the waste long term. Radioactive waste is stored in different interim depos depending on the level of radioactivity and the. Produced in addition to central sites such as our house gourlay been in the bin there are further interim storage sites used by industry and Research Facilities and on the grounds of Nuclear Power plants. The term interim storage may sound harmless but its actually incredibly dangerous says volves gangly bout a security and risk expert at the university of Natural Resources in vienna. He surprised by how reluctant germany is to choose a final storage site while the many concrete risks of interim storage are neglected. This obsession though does it what this interim storage situation really needs to be just that interim its not a solution everyone knows that something brewing above ground that really shouldnt be there like fortunately nothing has happened yet but it could and if it does that the waste would be unprotected and out there in the atmosphere we have to get it below ground quickly the stuff we saw in the midst of the chanel went to the end of clean this is for this club. Nuclear waste isnt safe today it probably never has been but for a long time that issue didnt receive much attention the first Nuclear Power station was connected to the great in russia in the mid one nine hundred fifty s. Today scientists are horrified by how casually the spent radioactive fuel was handled in the past. Germany has had Nuclear Power since one nine hundred sixty one. The first minister of the Nuclear Issues franciosa shrouds laid the groundwork for the optimism typical of his day. Yet only of Nuclear Energy can lead humanity into a new better age will be another golden one if we can master the demon that is Nuclear Power. The demon mainly referred to the spent nuclear fuel where should it go should it be discarded in the antarctic or shot into space with rockets both suggestions came to nothing too expensive and also too dangerous. A third approach has been implemented by several countries dumping Nuclear Waste in the sea. In one thousand nine hundred two greenpeace activists tried to stop the crew of a russian tanker from doing just that but to no avail to this day countless containers with radioactive waste on the bottom of the ocean. Does this mean thats the typical of how we dealt with technology in the Twentieth Century we saw the positive sides progress Growth Energy all buzzwords that drive things forward but we ignore the downside for a time on to ignore the un but there were only a few voices early on saying you know this is a big problem that we need to solve now was is probably a must for foot audition was most those voices didnt prevail because its. And now the waste is then. Technology philosophy. Is one of the people charged with coming up with a concrete and objective answer to the question should it go definitely underground thats the consensus among scientists around the world locked up in salt clay or granite the goal is to have found a final storage site by twenty thirty one. Storage should then begin in twenty fifty the decisive criterion is that the Nuclear Waste be stored safely for a million years. I mean yeah its a million years is an inconceivable time span for people technological or managerial measures cant really county safety for such a long period the geology can help because it deals with such timeframes and it could be said that i talk to think you know there are formations that remain stable for hundreds of thousands to millions of years beyond the one inched up. By contrast we humans and i activities are muse snapshots the pyramids of giza have been standing for four and a half thousand years. The cave drawings of lascaux. Have survived for as much as seventeen thousand years. Homo sapien ans the modern human evolved in africa as recently as two hundred thousand years ago and now homo sapien is wants to build something that will last a million years. Or is that just a number invented by politicians to loveless Nuclear Power in its radioactive legacy is a politically explosive issue in germany. Told. Holgate they. Gave. The whole. My. Goal a burn in lower saxony in one nine hundred seventy seven the government decided to build a final repository for highly Radioactive Nuclear waste here in a not so dime one point six billion euros were spent on exploration there were vehemently protests from the outset and not only about the permanent way step the demonstrators were against Nuclear Power per se. Most recent transport of radioactive waste to go away but it took place in nov twenty eighth eleven in the same year the federal government had decided to phase out Nuclear Power. In twenty thirteen the year in which the repository Site Selection act was adopted exploration was halted the old bogeyman or a thing of the plant says Green Party Politician from kearney his federal agency is responsible for finding a final reponse to tree the disc of the debate about final storage the possibilities and limitations and also the impossibilities was always shaped by whether you were for or against Nuclear Energy that central question has been solved by policy makers the decision to get out of Nuclear Power. Has been clearly taken the task at hand now is solving the problem that exists we cant just close our eyes and say were not interested its here that. The situation in sweden is different sweden is even holding a competition about who will be allowed to solve the Nuclear Waste problem two towns fall to become final repositories the municipality of. Two hours north of stockholm is now supposed to receive all of swedens Nuclear Waste. This is where the final repository will be built below a forest near the baltic coast in the depths of five hundred metres. Whats incredible from a german perspective is that the population of osama is anxious to see construction begin. Questioning this thing if the safe place that we should take the responsibility to store it here i guess yeah i think its good. Creates lots or. I think its good for the Community House prices will go up so im really positive that what to do we we have we have these things to take care of and we have to do it somewhere. Post hama and to go laban of the far north the mayor doesnt want to go into that he has a simple explanation for the residents attitude. We are a Nuclear Community we have the nuclear site power plant plant site up there which means that the understanding and the perception and for that matter the goodwill of the new pier in the streets of course much bigger here that compared to many other places i think you are a lot of people feel quite proud of the fact that that you are participating in the pioneering process. To test holes are currently being drilled at the site of the future depo if environmental officials in the Parliament Give the green light and construction will begin in twenty twenty two. Projects to create up to seven hundred jobs in addition the men negotiated a bonus of one hundred fifty Million Euros for the town. You may say that we are clever enough to to decide that we we wanted the strong the industry and of course at the end of the road there was a threat or whatever in order to be successful with this very difficult program they want they had to make sure that. But today i have a good cooperation with the municipality is. The industry the man means the swedish final repository operator s k b its employee ngo not home has been responsible for Public Relations and osama for many years. Now i have some in. The exact location of the repository is kept secret sweden has also become cautious a trip to the storage site for low and intermediate level radioactive waste is been around for many years the final repository for highly radioactive waste will probably look similar one day. Being an old home and her colleagues have set up an exhibition down here its to explain the swedish concept of visitors and alleviate fears of the final repose a trick. Transparency and openness thats the operators strategy. Gnowledge we have it set and also we have fired the system and that is fair game for us but also it would take a long time to create on this we are talking about the facility which will be open for iran sixty here this will push it over to the race shuts the door so we push for a solution for that. Not everyone sees it that way. There are skeptics in sweden too. Weve got one of them is johann sun the head of an environmental organization. He believes his fellow swedes are too laid back about the final reponse trick question. What we are putting on to future generations earth risks by by by doing. Project that we will not work it is frustrating that that that so much effort has to be done to finance the project in this sense but even the environmentalists im fundamentally opposed to storing Nuclear Waste underground there are more guards now since their most recent visit the entrance to the future final storage site resembles a prison gate. I think you are reaching clear if you are you know how slow say you want to come by the people against. You. I dont know if it were allowed to fail but the towers. The construction site is located on an island its almost impossible to see what happens there good protection from terrorists but also from critics in bush hama harbor these two are planning the next step of their educational campaign. About the horrible snuffle the idea in sweden is to put it in copper canisters and then down into the bedrock. And the problem appears to be that the copper well be destroyed much faster than intended so instead of being safe for a hundred thousand years it may break down only after a couple of hundred years as a man but i just know there will be a referendum in hama in february twenty eighth and residents could still change their minds about the final repository project pantheons land knows the likelihood of that is low people in sweden have a high trust of of government of of politicians but especially of the government agencies. And f k b is perceived as being something part of the government and therefore that its easier for them to have trust. Critical over size of the final repository project to. Very important but in sweden two the greatest dangers are above ground Nuclear Waste storage is all about risk tradeoffs. Ask us harm this town also applied to be the site of the final repository thats right applied but the granite here turned out to be less stable than that of its rival applicant thats why i asked hama won the bid nevertheless further research on final repository safety is being conducted on the outskirts of town four hundred forty nine meters below ground in the s. The hard rock in a bar a tree the s k b company runs a test lab here one of the things it studies is the clay that would be used to envelop the Nuclear Waste casks. If a has responsible for Public Relations and geologist olga musk and scalia admit that theyre still experimenting. Sometimes when you do it for a year you see that theory in practice arent the same thing from the mistakes you learn to do do with the right way so making mistakes is important. And hair not finding them. Trial and error thats the principle Nuclear Waste disposal escapee has been using for the past forty years to find the best storage method. This film is intended to explain the concept of visitors if you will elements are to be enclosed in copper containers. Deep down in the granite special machines then lower the containers into the bore holes then the holes are filled with special bentonite clay later the entire system of tunnels is gradually filled to when the storage site is full after eighty to one hundred years it will be closed forever it wont be marked its supposed to be forgotten the swedes say that theyve done enough research to get moving after all new insights will always come along. Just waiting for for effective technique wont think just anywhere because thats thats thats what how much do you know what say back to feel maybe something happens tomorrow maybe next year we wait to eat until that lets think here. But thats not the solution that is just. Not doing anything. The swedish approach also has risks water is already entering the granite via cracks the operator is performing a long term experiment to find out what that will mean for the Nuclear Waste containers but s k b only wants to reveal its results after all the permit. Have been approved is that transparency. In germany things are progressing more slowly at least theres a plan for searching for the final riposte tree now. It officially starts with a blank map but experts already know that such a final repast tree can only be built insult clay or granite salt domes may exist in northern germany. Clay can also be found in the north as well as in the region around corn and like constance. Granite his found in eastern bavaria and in saxony geological formations such as salt domes have grown over millions of years the layers of rock above are safety barriers that would prevent a release of the radioactive waste even if there were major changes to the surface. So much can happen in a million years there was a time when the alps grew by five millimeters a year so in theory a Mountain Range with a height of five thousand meters could grow up during that period all that could be a new ice age those are uncertainties we have to live with if we want to get our Nuclear Waste below ground. When a community here that is legal will never have one hundred percent safety at a given time because our knowledge will progress but in my view theres no alternative to this route my worry is the longer we wait the more we run the risk that the politicians will find it less and less attractive to take responsibility other routes will seem increasingly attractive such as the one that for me is the question of the cheap route namely disposing of this way. In a country other than germany you can go to them and. That has been out of the question so far according to the principle that the polluter should pay Nuclear Waste has to be disposed of its country of origin decades of research have gone into how Nuclear Waste can be stored in the safest possible manner in germany and the institute for Nuclear Waste disposal in carls were for example unfortunately german scientists were long seen as willing accessories to the nuclear industry. Was a moment the feeling that exists in many places right now is distrust. People dont really know what to believe anymore and the scientists have a hard time regaining that trust with the kind of statements they make so i think itll be a while before we get back to a place of mutual trust is going. On. Trust thats something the scientists hope to get by doing well founded research and by being transparent about their results they want to find out what dangers are caused by water infiltrating into a final repository folke immense works with highly radioactive plutonium. The dangerous material is stored in shielded boxes and is only moved with the help of robotic arms the chemist is testing how radioactive substances inside a cask react when they come into contact with water rusting casks deep in the ground up to now thats been a horror scenario but the tests have delivered surprising results. There is much to suggest that rust on the final repository container binds and even holds back the dangerous radio nuclides. If i think about it long before that i moved on flex to size even though we think of it as a bad sign of containers corroding in water is approaching the wasteful and it turns out that this corrosion process can provide protective factors and is not necessarily simply a disaster there are other interactions here that were looking at in this experiment we can expand the scientists in karlsruhe or simulate the ways in which radioactivity from a final depo could enter the environment. The first step is to determine what happens to radioactive substances that leak from their container and come into contact with water. Chemist marcus are meyer is an expert in this scenario. It will inevitably occur sooner or later in our final report a tree and put it in some of the movement or. Do the radionuclides dissolve in the water allowing them to be transported quickly during the experiment a greenish sediment appears in the test tube can we get that we can compare the colors if we look at the precipitant id say its definitely plutonium for you. That indicates that the water only takes up a small amount of the plutonium a significant amount remains in the final repository as a precipitate meaning it wont reach the surface. Most guys remains cautious regardless he too says well never have one hundred percent safety but how safe is safe enough. To fire against its a difficult question to answer there are always depends on the society in question for me is like this if we stay below the risk potential that nature gives us then thats a very good concept and. So what save enough is certainly a good question but the actual question is shouldnt we at least move to a state the safer than the one we have now. And. So the Nuclear Waste should go underground into granite rocks for example geochemist tossin schaffer and his team are examining this type of rock granite is very hard but craggy if it is to house a final repose a tree the containers need an extra wall with the clay material bentonite for example like in sweden it swells when it comes into contact with water. In the seanad and if it were looking at how this bentonite swells to fill the open space maybe to the extent that it becomes completely sealed off. Cracks in the rock could be sealed up this way radioactively contaminated water would be sealed in but in the simulation only a small portion of the radionuclides managed to escape from a final report a tree thats good news that the client the federal government will like hearing these results but this is whats making some people suspicious. I ds a positive in porch off we have to look at all these positive messages in detail do they really help us find a solution to the problem rather just small interesting effects that can be interpreted either way. As cunt or feel we have to be really concrete about what they mean so we dont run the risk of having all this night in distracting science that doesnt provide a relevant solution to the problem but us poppea must better than most. Nice science whats also nice for politicians is that they dont have to decide anything as long as the scientists are still researching calculating and testing Klaus Fischer operative and his colleagues are working on long term safety analyses for final nuclear reponse injuries. Research commissioned by the government designed to produce many encouraging results vehemently rejects that challenge. Was. Sure no were not trying to make anything look good or wed lose our legitimacy if we did that we can all make things look good but i dont think that scientifically acceptable it hurts me for this interest because. All of. The geologist believes that the science is advanced enough that we can Start Building final storage sites. The Computer Program v. H. S. Will soon allow scientists to conduct safety tests in a virtual final repository class for apples knows that the longer we search for the perfect side the more critical the temporary storage above ground will become. Again the end of the lifetime of an interim storage site i have to move the spent fuel elements i can leave it in the car six research has been done into the changes that this fuel will undergo over those periods of time lets just say the situation in the car six doesnt improve with age that means the problem becomes more and more urgent the longer it persists for kind of a. Cast or Nuclear Waste cask is safe for forty years experts say when scientists like klaus fisher appled urges to hurry environmental organizations and citizens initiatives listen with mistrust but the situation today is different from fifty years ago the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of host rock have been studied around the world expects agree that a final repose a tree under good geological conditions provides a high degree of safety due to its depth and that we should take advantage of that as long as we still can get them off and alls we always assume that our society will continue to develop the way it has done for the past hundred hundred fifty years but what if a big Natural Disaster strikes that at that point the final storage issue wont be the priority anymore itll be in last place i. Trust that. Many experts believe the time is right and yet decades will pass in germany before a final repository can start operating. Why thats the case becomes very obvious here at the as a to my never from builder this is where the mistakes of germanys Nuclear Waste policy are most. Marked and race thoughts and his colleague to be as how many are responsible for site safety. Joisting cage takes them to the first working level of a salt mine. Smaller than a hundred years old. The mine is dilapidated the shafts were widens to such an extent that they became unstable. At a depth of four hundred ninety meters the geophysicists measure how the rock is moving centimeter by centimeter. Its visible to the naked eye that the ground is bulging dangerously thats right yeah its huge what you can see here under this line is pressure from the rock on the southern flank the roofs of these mining chambers are around five to six meters thick and this pressure from the rock causes the halas spaces to be compressed at the same time these mining levels bulge in the end they will crack due to the defamation but its not a pretty picture shot in space. Nevertheless Nuclear Waste has been stored here since the late one nine hundred sixty s. A total of one hundred twenty six thousand containers with low level and intermediate level radioactive waste. Is going to be that is going up and these are the images that have become etched in peoples minds the digger letting the barrels drop its symbolic of how not to do final storage and it was said for a long time that everything was safe the population was left in that belief and the authorities involved acted that way as well then suddenly when the issue of closing this mine came up we were told how dangerous it was and that there was only a short time left that doesnt exactly nurture trust if it did exactly the opposite and were still dealing with that today toward. The miners main job consists of stabilizing the salt domes. As best they can so that one day in the distant future the radioactive waste can be recovered water is getting in through cracks in the rock the liquid is being collected at a depth of six hundred fifty eight meters and then pumped away. Eleven and a half cubic metres every day. To divest thats what this side of the water inflow is one of the big challenges we face here we cant rule out an emergency before the final cask is recovered meaning so much water will get into the say that we wont be able to control the system any at. The water isnt contaminated with radioactivity here the water further down is that the price of the Safety Measures one hundred Million Euros per year. Is in cost. Of this money comes one hundred percent from tax payers that means were all paying for the sins of the past. Isnt least in the knowledge that individual Companies Made a fair bit of money creating this waste that will get food into. The chambers with the radioactive waste are deep in the ground covered over by concrete experts fear conditions down there may be catastrophic thats why the German Parliament decided in twenty thirty to retrieve the waste but without knowing whether that retrieval was technically feasible the governments advisory body on radiation safety is now recommending that the asam mine be closed off forever keeping it open or closing it forever that question will also arise for a future final repository. To some specialists insist that. Final story site should remain accessible so that emergency measures can be taken if needed. The majority of experts disagree however they say the danger that the wrong people can get access is too great after all the final repository would contain substances that could be used for weapons and guarding the waste all the time is impossible they say. If our wire guards in concrete cant replace geological barriers in the long term in my view below ground we need the security of these geological barriers because that gives us a whole new option namely that we can finally forget about the waste in society will forget about this waste. Forget about the waste that could be risky people in the distant future could accidentally open this pandoras box and be exposed to the radiation how can we best warn them. Christian touch a linguist from berlins Technical University is looking into that he puts himself in the shoes of a person who in many thousands of years time sees a sign reading warning Nuclear Waste in a lush rammstein fired by a savvy it up in the worst Case Scenario they neither know that its a message nor that its meant for them or anyone at all and they dont understand what it means if we look at old german i can read it because im a german linguistics expert and only because ive been trained to read it for an ordinary german conductor stand it and thats just one thousand five hundred years ago but what if three thousand years have gone by i suspect that hasnt of gals and. Thats why in the one nine hundred eighty s. A french italian team researched alternative ways of conveying information. They suggested breeding genetically modified cats whose fare lights up when its exposed to radioactivity. Special nuclear flowers could also warn people in a more sustainable manner than writing with symbols. Information has never been deliberately passed on and understood across such a long time period. But never before did humans have such a great responsibility to subsequent generations the challenge of creating final riposte trees is huge its probably the most complex Infrastructure Project in history and its a tough test for democracy what is really the right moment to begin it. Of knowledge keeps there will appear in science that means theyll always be progress in what we know final storage in a deep geological repository is one option of keeping the radionuclides away from the biosphere for a very long time as far as we know the other option would be to do nothing of the. Archaeologist Cornelius Holt all from Lunar University in sweden agrees that doing nothing is a bad idea even though we may have to admit to ourselves that the task at hand is actually too much for us. To go to all sort of accept is the biggest challenge is to conceive of the time periods were talking about as an archaeologist i have some insight into ancient Human History if we think about how old homo sapien says then were talking in two hundred thousand years roughly form of a if we think a million years into the future we cant even assume that homo sapien ns as a species will still be dominant on earth as an archaeologist cornelius hoelterhoff is used to approaching history by looking back that gives you an unusual view Nuclear Waste is the cultural legacy of our bizarre era. Could us also consider how its going to be reasons other than safety why we should preserve it or if were going to preserve it isnt there a whole different story to tell than just the one about the dangers of radioactive waste in the. Nuclear waste is a remnant of our age one that we want to and have to preserve for the future it has that in common with cultural monuments although its the other way round here were not preserving it because we think its good we want to preserve it to protect ourselves from it as the for the shifts. The role of cultural monuments is to tell us about a different time if we see it that way and you clear waste is one of the most important sources for learning about the second half of the Twentieth Century that stood out. Naivete and hubris could those be the characteristics future generations will ascribe to the science and society of the late Twentieth Century will the twenty First Century go down in history as the era in which a solution to the Nuclear Waste problem was found its uncertain but were going to have to try whether were for or against Nuclear Power is irrelevant now. He moves on piece of the solution to this problem is something we wont get around. Regardless of all the questions and doubts we cant leave it up to our children and grandchildren that wouldnt just be cowardly it would be very risky as we often mention thats why we need politicians and scientists who will take on this problem head on and take responsibility. The only way is to restore trust and develop awareness of our shared task and then to build a final resting place for Nuclear Waste as quickly as possible. As i. Its an incredible experiment hopefully itll succeed. By one another. Why. Or why. Its all about the stomach. Its all about the storms inside. Its all about George Chance to discover the world from different perspectives. Join us inspired by distinctive instagram murders at g. W. Stories the topic of each week on instagram. When im traveling to be comfortable. But i also want to stay up to date on the latest news events. And e. W. Make them hard to try to find easy just because its available and thousands of hometowns resorts cruise ships worldwide. Or have you founded on the inside of. The picture that shows the w in your room you can learn a great price d. W. Dot com travel quite as. Good a. Little. This is news live from berlin chaos and destruction in europe the worst storm in a decade batters britain the netherlands and germany the Train Service grinds to a halt stranding many overnight here in cologne well get the latest on the chaos also coming up controversy over the killing of a rival Police Officer leaves venezuelas opposition to pull out of talks with the government this as the country spirals into a deep crisis with widespread protests and looting. Donald trump approaches a year in the white house and whats the verge