The interim stories signs in germany switzerland region houses more than three hundred conflicts of highly Radioactive Nuclear waste. The search is on for a permanent storage site that will be safe for a million years. Problem is there is no such place. If we believe in a completely safe final storage site were deceiving ourselves. Weve taken on too much from weve taken on too much with this selfinflicted problem. 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 to get on well with my colleagues they do a great job i do a great job i feel safe here seans are. Followed the man is a crane driver in hole eight he operates the overhead crane that can carry a load of one 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 Werder and his colleagues here are the custodians of an elaborate provisional solution. The problem will not. Be in 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. Thirty 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 of. 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 lets get on going up whats the potential scenario is the crash of a large passenger plane 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 getting the war is aimed at dealing with newer threat scenarios and insights from federal and safety authorities regarding the impact of third parties on the storage sites and fossil means things like terrorist proofing and other scenarios were going to send out again. In the operating permit for the interim Storage Facility runs out in twenty thirty six its already clear that it will have to be extended as 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 call a button and the been there all fairly sound harmless but its actually incredibly dangerous says valve gang leave out a security and risk expert at the university of Natural Resources in vienna hes surprised by how reluctant germany is to choose a final storage site all the many concrete risks of interim storage are neglected. This obsession of us it whats 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 the waste would be unprotected and out there in the atmosphere we have to get it below ground quickly thought from the sludge mr bush never went to the end a clean this is for his 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 grid 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 for Nuclear Issues france years of strauss laid the groundwork with the optimism typical of his day. Yet only of Nuclear Energy can leak 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 wishing to go should it be discarded in the antarctic or shot into space with rockets both suggestions came to nothing too expensive and. Too dangerous. A third approach has been implemented by several countries dumping Nuclear Waste in the city 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 my on the bottom of the ocean. Doesnt sell him and thats a 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 ignored the downside fauna tie him on to ignore well there were only a few voices early on saying you know this is a big problem that we need to solve now it was as poppy a must for food side issues most those voices didnt prevail because its. A 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 where should it go definitely underground thats the consensus among scientists around the world locked up in salt clay or granite the goal is to 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 its a million years isnt inconceivable timespan for people technological 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 your affirmations that remain stable for hundreds of thousand. To millions of years yeah i mean if you want to. 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 of survived for as much as seventeen thousand years. Homo sapien and the modern human evolved in africa as recently as two hundred thousand years ago and now homo sapiens wants to build something that will last a million years. Or is that just the number invented by politicians to loveless Nuclear Power in its radioactive legacy is a politically explosive issue in germany. Holding hold her thing. God hold. My. Goal a been in lower saxony in one hundred seventy seven the government decided to build a final repository for highly Radioactive Nuclear waste here in an old salt dime one point six billion euros was spent on exploration there were vehemently protests from the outset and not only about the permanent way step by the demonstrators were against Nuclear Power per se. Most recent transport of radioactive waste to go away but it took place in november 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 repast a tree Site Selection act was adopted exploration was halted the old bogeyman or a thing of the past says Green Party Politician from koenigs his federal agency is responsible for finding a. Final repast a tree the disk was a debate about final storage the possibilities and limitations and also the impossibilities was always shaper whether you were for or against Nuclear Energy that central question has been solved by policymakers the decision to get out of Nuclear Power has been clearly taken the task at hand there 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 fought 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 the depth of five hundred metres. Whats incredible from a german perspective is that the population of osama is anxious to see construction begin. Lashing is a good thing if the safe place then we should take the responsibility to store it here i guess if i think its good. Creates lots or. I think its good for the Community House prices will go up from im really positive that were to be do we we have we have these things to take care of and we have to do it somewhere. Post hama and and to go laban of the far north the man doesnt want to go into that he has a simple explanation for the residents attitude. We are a new Care Community we have the new. Power plant plant the site out there which means that the understanding of the perception and for dark matter the good will of the new in the streets of course much bigger here that compared to many other places and i think you are a lot of people feel quite proud of the fact that but youre participating in the pioneering process. To test homes 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. The project will 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 were clever enough to to to decide that we we wanted this from 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. They have a good cooperation with the municipalities. The industry the man means the swedish final repository operate the s k b its employee in the nonhome has been responsible for Public Relations in osama for many years. Now and its not something. 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 its been around for many years the final repository for highly radioactive waste will probably look similar one day. Youre not 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. Have knowledge we have except that its also we have fired the system and that is fair for us but also it would take a long time to create all this if we are talking about the facility which will be open for iran sixteen years we will push it all to come together a shells but also it will push forward a solution for that. Not everyone sees it that way. There are skeptics in sweden to. Believe that. 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 the future generations are risks by by by doing a project that we will not work it is frustrating that doug that so much effort has to be done to fight the project in the service but even the environmentalists are fundamentally opposed to storing Nuclear Waste on the ground 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 in a castle yes ok you want to come by the vehicle again. If you were allowed to film the colors. 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 hama harbor these two are planning the next step of their Educational Campaign some plots. Like 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 thirty four hundred thousand years it may break down only after a couple of hundred years as of my liking 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 one knows the likelihood of that is low people if we did 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 of critical oversight of the final report the tree project is very important but in sweden to the greatest dangers are above ground Nuclear Waste storage is all about risk tradeoffs. Ask us how 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. P. L. Hardrock laboratory. 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 i had a 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 learned to do do with their i place or 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 was intended to explain the concept to 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 nature 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 mocked 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 a better technique wont take us anywhere because thats thats thats what how much do you know whats a bad defeat maybe something happens tomorrow movie next year we waited feet on to do that lets think here. Thats not the solution that is just. Not doing anything. The swedish approach also has risks water is already entering the ground it via cracks the up. Freighter 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 permits have been approved as 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 the world and like constance. Granite is found in east in 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. Range with a height of five thousand meters could grow up during that period or there could be a new ice age those are uncertainties we have to live with if we want to get our Nuclear Waste below ground. Going to continue to here because well 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 if 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 waste. Country other than germany we can go to. 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 in 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. 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. And. 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. Falcon ments 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 car ask react when they come into contact with water rusting casks deep in the ground up to now thats been a horace 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. Long before that i was on flex to size even though we think of it as a bad sign of containers corroding and water is approaching the wasteful it turns out that this corrosion process can provide protective factors is not necessarily simply a disaster there are other into actions 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 out meyer is an expert in this scenario. It will inevitably occur sooner or later in our final report a tree for the thermos and the movement will. 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 is 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 that always depends on the society in question for me its like this if we stay below the risk potential that nature gives us then thats a very good concept. So whats safe enough is certainly a good question but the actual question is shouldnt we at least move to a state that is safer than the one we have now so when the small. Inside say yes it. So the Nuclear Waste should go underground into granite rocks for example geochemist toss and schaefer and his team are examining this type of rock granite is very hard but craggy if it is to house a fine or oppose 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 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 in the simulation only a small portion of the radionuclides managed to escape from a fund a repository thats good news for the client the federal government will like hearing these results but this is whats making some people suspicious. I would use a positive in porch often we have to look at all these positive messages in detail to you they really help us find a solution to the problem rather than just small interesting effects that can be interpreted either way and on vietnam can this country 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 of the us poppy and was 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 appart and his colleagues are working on long term safety analyses for final nuclear reponse trees. Research commissioned by the government designed to produce mainly encouraging results fisher vehemently rejects that challenge. Was there are. 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 thats scientifically acceptable. We showed some fear this interest because. All of. The geologist believes that the science is advanced enough that we can Start Building final storage sites. You. The Computer Program v. H. S. Will soon allow scientists to conduct safety tests in a virtual final repository class for apple 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 casket 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 from kind of a. Cast on Nuclear Waste cask is safe for forty years experts say when scientists like apple 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 of being studied around the world expects agree that a final repository and a 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 of a big Natural Disaster strikes at that point the final storage issue wont be the priority anymore itll be in last place i. Didnt say. Many experts believe the time is ripe 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 apparent. Mark and i stuarts and his colleague to be as how many are responsible for site safety. Waisting cage takes them to the first working level of a salt mine. Its more than one 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. Waves are visible to the naked eye that the ground is bulging dangerously that finally its use what you can see here under this line is pressure from the rock on the southern flank of the roofs of these mining chambers 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 shots with. 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. This interview that is going on. 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 and 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 caskets recovered meaning so much water will get into the say that we wont be able to control the system and. 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 to send of this money comes one hundred percent from tax payers that means were all paying for the sins of the past playing. In the knowledge that individual Companies Made a fair bit of money creating this waste we thought it was good for. 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 assa mine be closed off forever keeping it open or closing it forever that question would also arise for a future final repository. Some specialists insist that. The 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. While guards and 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 berlin is 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 five a savvy that 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 condoned or stand it and thats just one thousand five hundred years ago but what if three thousand years have gone by a sustained title isnt out 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 repositories 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. Opens with the knowledge keeps developing 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. Archaeologist cornelius hold off 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 accepted the biggest challenge is to conceive of the time periods were talking about as an archaeologist i have some insight into an ancient Human History if we think about how old homo sapien is then were talking two hundred thousand years roughly form a day if we think a million years into the future we can even assume that homo sapien ns as a species will still be dominant on earth as an archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf is used to approaching history by looking back that gives him an unusual view Nuclear Waste is the cultural legacy of our bizarre era. Does also consider 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 study of. Nuclear waste is a remnant of our age one that we want to and have to preserve for the future but 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 then you clear waste is one of the most important sources for learning about the second half of the Twentieth Century and that saddam. 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 is found in some certain but were going to have to try whether with for or against Nuclear Power is irrelevant now. He moves and hes 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 im. Its an incredible experiment hopefully itll succeed. When students film our face. Each year tens of thousands of israeli teenagers travel to poland to visit former concentration camps and memorial sites the new generation tries to come to terms with the holocaust personal way and documents that experiences want you to. Hash tag uploading the holocaust to. Deal with. The tumbling dice or am i as canterburys or dealing with any and i dont i killed many civilians with an International Company including my father wilding said i was a student economy i wanted to build a life for myself lactase the foliage but suddenly life became alledge accounts of. Providing cites global news that measures w. Made for mines. Never again in the close of either tells the story well it has to do for you but look to for good. Monday morning. To day she recounts events young people can barely imagine but they truly to understand the use of reports from washington d. C. I did was a remarkable woman. To mancala close Remembrance Day we posted today on d. W. To. The state of the news coming to the wire from berlin a massive suicide bombing rocks Kabul Officials say at least ninety five people are that and more than one hundred fifty others are injured according to the latest from the Afghan Capital also coming out Holocaust Survivors and their families gather at the fillmore auschwitz and death camps to Mark International holocaust Remembrance Day it comes amid warnings of rising anti semitism here in europe. And well introduce you to a ninety five year old paul