After a joint design phase, representatives of civil society together with the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) have launched new forms of participation. The concept was presented to the public in an online event in November 2021. An opinion poll among the participants showed that a clear majority of around 90 percent (of participants) were in favour of the participation concept presented.

The concept includes participation formats that focus on the work progress of the Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH (BGE) in narrowing down the sub-areas. The distinctive feature of the formats is their cooperative approach: the aim is to develop jointly supported solutions for advancing the search for a repository for high-level radioactive waste in consideration of the diversity of the different roles and perspectives.

Joint exploration and development

A jointly supported concept was developed in a design process lasting several weeks. Representatives of BASE, the young generation, local authorities, social organisations, and citizens took part in the process. The BGE mbH and representatives of the National Citizens’ Oversight Committee also accompanied the design phase. The participation officer was consulted for mediation. The participants were united in their concern to facilitate an effective public participation in the progress of BGE mbH's work, also during the phase between the end of the expert conference on sub-areas and the start of the regional conferences. The task of BGE mbH is to select a small number of siting regions from the identified sub-regions that, in their opinion, will remain in the procedure. Once BGE mbH proposes specific siting regions that are to be explored in more detail, the regional conferences for these areas will also be launched.

The concept developed during the design process envisages two main elements of participation:

• The expert forum is open to the public and is to take place at least once a year. All interested parties can obtain information about the work progress of BGE mbH, discuss it, scrutinize it, and work together on key topics. BGE mbH will consider the results of the forum in its further work.
• The advisory and planning group is responsible for preparing and organising the expert forum. The group’s primary task is to closely accompany the work of BGE mbH regarding the identification of siting regions. The committee consists of ten elected representatives of civil society and two representatives each of BASE and BGE mbH. While the civil society representatives are to be elected by the expert forum, the institutions will delegate their members. The National Citizens’ Oversight Committee has announced that it will not take on an active role in the group and sees itself as an observer.

Broad public support for the concept

The concept was presented to the public and discussed on 13 November 2021; about 320 people attended the event. There was great interest in participating in the advisory and planning group. A total of 26 representatives of the status groups (science, municipalities, organised civil society and citizens) stood for election. Two people from each group were elected at the kick-off event. In addition, the election of the working group of the under-30s (U30 AG) contributed to strengthening the commitment of the younger generation and to integrating them into the future participation process with two seats in the advisory and planning group. Please refer to the documentation for details about the members of the new committee as well as further information on the event.

The group will come together on 8 December 2021 to get to know each other. Ahead of its first substantive working session to take place in January, the group will focus on organisational issues during the December meeting. Afterwards, the advisory and planning group is to meet every four to six weeks.

The first expert forum planned for the spring will be an initial milestone for the group’s work. At this forum, the advisory and planning group will be newly elected and the process to date will be reflected upon. The reason being that this is not a fixed concept that has been worked out in detail, but a prototype of participation formats that are to be evaluated and continuously improved during their implementation. The aim is to make work progress transparent and comprehensible at an early stage in a cooperative process, to identify potential problems and to jointly develop viable solutions.