Documents relating to the plan-approval procedure

The documents relating to public participation were submitted to the plan-approval authority, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of Saxony-Anhalt (MLU), on 13 September 2005.

The essential challenge to the project also becomes clear by the fact that the licensing authority (MLU) took about four years to declare that the documents were suitable for being laid out to public inspection. On account of the large complexity of the project the MLU had already considered detailed documents that would actually have to be examined in detail later on and not already in the process of declaring that the documents were suitable for being published in the public participation procedure.

Following comprehensive technical discussions of this topic and many comments by experts, part of which also referred to detailed documents that would actually have to be examined later on, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) entirely revised the documents required for public inspection according to the requirements of the MLU and submitted them again in January 2009. The licensing authority terminated the examination of the documents in September 2009 and declared that they be suitable for the public participation procedure.

The MLU displayed the documents required for public participation in Magdeburg, Erxleben and Helmstedt in the period from 22 October until 21 December 2009. Furthermore the BfS has published the documents on its homepage, which continues to be accessible for all interested persons.

Apart from the documents for public participation the BfS has prepared a multitude of documents describing in detail the individual decommissioning measures and containing the analyses that are necessary to assess the long-term safety. The MLU is now in possession of ca. 200 documents for examination. Currently detailed planning is being carried out relating to the individual project measures which take into account the already available examination results of the MLU.

Access to relevant and other documents

The main statements from the relevant procedural documentation were summarised in the document "Decommissioning of ERA Morsleben - Plan for the decommissioning the repository for radioactive waste" (in German only). The complete documents relating to the plan-approval procedure are also only available in German language and can be found on the German homepage.