Guest editorial

Abstract

The Asse Salt Mine near Brunswick in the Federal Republic of Germany has since 1965 been used to develop and to test suitable techniques for the safe disposal of radioactive wastes. Test disposal of low-level wastes started in 1967. During this large-scale experiment about 141 000 200-litre drums of low-level wastes were successfully disposed of until November 1978. Starting in 1972 techniques for the disposal of intermediate-level wastes were successfully demonstrated over a five-year period by disposing of 1298 200-litredrums. As a result of these tests and the accompanying research and development programmes, especially for the disposal of high-level wastes, one can now conclude that reliable techniques exist for the disposal of radioactive wastes at a full-scale industrial repository. This was planned within a German Entsorgungszentrum.