BGE Repository Search Navigator – an interactive multimedia browser-based application for public information

The German Site Selection Procedure for a repository site for high-level nuclear waste is subdivided into three major phases with an increasing level of detail. In 2020, the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) completed Step 1 of Phase I and identified 90 sub-areas with favorable geologic conditions for safe disposal. These sub-areas cover 54 percent of Germany’s surface area and are currently under investigation for the selection of a limited number of siting regions for surface-based exploration.

These siting regions will be identified in the current Step 2 of Phase I. BGE will publish preliminary working statuses annually to ensure that the work progress of BGE remains transparent to the public leading to a final publication in 2027 with proposed siting regions for surface-based exploration (Phase 2).

In order to create traceability and maximize the transparency of the procedure, BGE also takes the provided advice, suggestions, and comments of the citizens that participated in the 2020 Sub-Areas Conference into account. It was recognized that the necessary information regarding the Site Selection Procedure has to be presented in a cumulative method and not distributed via different websites and interactive maps.

To achieve that goal BGE started in 2021/2022 to improve the presentation of results, with professional support, for various stakeholder groups, such as the press, politicians, the scientific community, and interested citizens. The result is a new interactive multimedia web application – the Repository Search Navigator. The aim of the application is to make the process of narrowing down the sub-areas to a few best-suitable siting regions visible and comprehensible.

On November 4, 2024, BGE presented the navigator with an interactive map of the intermediate statuses of the so-called repräsentative vorläufige Sicherheitsuntersuchungen (rvSU) – representative preliminary safety analyses . The rvSU are used to evaluate the sub-areas with respect to the expected containment of the radioactive waste, classifying them into categories D (unsuitable) to A (best suitability). Using additional legally defined assessment tools like the geoscientific weighing criteria and eventually the planning-scientific weighing criteria, in 2027 BGE will propose siting regions from the category A areas.

The Repository Search Navigator is a browser-based tool that allows interested parties to inform themselves about the categorized regions in Germany. It provides information on the current status of processing, the reasons for classifying an area as unsuitable or as having low suitability on the basis of criteria, and the geology. The navigator is now the central digital tool for BGE to communicate the progress of the Site Selection Procedure and visualize the current work of the rvSU. This poster gives some background information on the development of – and explains the content and structure of – the Repository Search Navigator.