On 25 April 2017, the operator responsibilities for the Asse II mine as well as the Konrad and Morsleben repositories were transferred to the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH, BGE). This website of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) will therefore no longer be updated and displays the status as on 24 April 2017. You will find current information at the BGE: www.bge.de

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What happens in Asse?

Works for safe decommissioning

Radiation protection

Employees during the contamination control Contamination ControlContamination control at the shaft exit

Once the BfS had taken over the Asse II mine, it implemented for the first time a complete, verifiable and quality-assured radiation protection regime. To meet the legal requirements in terms of radiation protection, the BfS developed

  • A radiation protection regulation
  • New radiation protection instructions and
  • New internal rules of undertakings.

The radiation protection regulation determines, among others, radiation protection areas and defines “potentially hazardous sites”.

For operational safety reasons the BfS has sealed the last emplacement chambers that were still open. Thus also the radiation exposure due to volatile radionuclides has reduced (in particular radon-222).

Asse health monitoring

The assessed radiation exposure in the Asse repository is too low for there to be a proven link to cancer among members of staff. That is the result of the first step of the Asse health monitoring (GM Asse) which was presented by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) on 10 February 2011. The BfS has assessed in retrospect the radiation exposure to the members of staff for the period from 1967 until 2008. For this purpose available measuring and employment data of the former operator Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) was verified with regard to its completeness and comprehensibility and compared with data from other sources. Furthermore members of staff were interviewed on a random basis. However, it cannot be ruled out that in individual cases people were exposed to higher levels of radiation that were not documented.

Operational radiation protection

To rule out a hazard to the staff and the general public, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) has taken numerous safety precautions. Both staff and visitors to the mine are protected in the scope of operational radiation protection, e.g. by establishing radiation protection areas, using dose monitoring and contamination controls. The discharge of radioactive substances into the environment is controlled by monitoring the exhaust air.

Transfer of operator responsibilities

On 25 April 2017, the operator responsibilities for the Asse II mine as well as the Konrad and Morsleben repositories were transferred to the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH, BGE). Previously, the responsibility for the projects was with the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS). The foundations for the change of operatorship are laid down in the "Act on the Realignment of the Organisational Structures in the Field of Radioactive Waste Disposal", which became effective on 30 July 2016. The BfS focusses on the federal tasks of radiation protection, for example in the field of defence against nuclear hazards, medical research, mobile communication, UV protection or the measuring networks for environmental radioactivity.

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