Burying spent radioactive material in salt mines is not entirely practical, mostly wishful thinking that someone in the future will find a way to neutralize the waste. I think that this is extremely irresponsible, more like putting the problem out of sight and out of mind, rather than dealing with the problem directly. The benefits of nuclear energy do not outweigh the dangers and long-term issues like waste.
In 1964 the salt mining operations become economically unviable and suspended at the Lower Saxony area, in Germany. A year later, in 1965 was the moment when the Asse II Salt Mine started being used as a research mine and storage site for more than a hundred thousand barrels of low- to medium-level nuclear waste. According to A brief history of the nuclear waste repository Asse II by Hubert Mania, about 125,000 barrels of weak radioactive waste is stored in the Asse mine, under the banner of research. This is the sum total of all the weak atomic waste that was generated in the Federal Republic during this period. Research was stopped in 1995; between 1995 and 2004 cavinates were filled with salt. This is a brief timeline of Asse II’s history.
The current problem that Germany is facing goes beyond that. In 1965 the Asse-II mine was turned into a temporary storage, but as the development of nuclear energy boomed, the mine became a permanent disposal site for nuclear material. And now, water filtrations and poor maintenance also means the mine is unstable and in danger of collapsing.
More: From Salt Mines to Floating Stars as Nuclear Waste Disposals « dpr-barcelona
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