- Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung (BASE), F4, Cologne, Germany (martin.navarro@base.bund.de)
(Abstract for workshop W4 at SafeND 2025)
In the German site selection procedure, clay stone, salt rock, and crystalline rock are permissible host rocks. On this basis, the site with the best possible safety has to be selected from a large number of alternative sites which requires considerable resources. Reducing the effort and duration of the site selection procedure is therefore of great interest.
An efficient way of achieving this goal would be to reject certain host rocks and their associated safety concepts. That this could be justifiable from a safety perspective, was shown in project METIENS. METIENS was conducted by the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management and investigated the problem of justifying site rejection decisions by means of long-term safety assessments.
METIENS identified several ways of increasing the efficiency of the site selection procedure in connection with safety comparisons. The presentation will focus on one of these ways. It will show that it is possible to justify the rejection of safety concepts based on safety arguments without needing to draw on weaker arguments of technical feasibility or efficiency. The safety argument does not require substantial site characterization but only an early elicitation of consensual and safety related conceptual preferences.
How to cite: Navarro, M.: How safety concepts can be rejected for reasons of safety, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-166, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-166, 2025.
