Marcos Buser, Senior scientist[1]

Pigsty earth[1]

Human communities have always left their waste in the environment. This dumping or leaving waste in the living environment worked reasonably well as long as the natural waste materials rotted or decayed and re-entered the natural cycles. With the advent of industrialization and, in particular, with the creation or transformation of highly toxic chemical or radiochemical substances, this convenient disposal of unwanted items is simply no longer feasible. Over the last hundred years and more, highly toxic waste has simply been dumped and deposited in nature all over the globe, from chemical industrial waste to radioactive waste to highly toxic military warfare agents. This is a highly dangerous legacy of several generations of industrial, military, and consumer societies, scattered across entire regions and marine areas. Modern societies are therefore under increasing existential pressure to get to grips with the sins of the past in the exploitation of raw materials, the emission of combustion gases, and the “disposal” of highly toxic waste: a Herculean task that will take many more generations to complete, with costs beyond imagination. Although this dramatic development has come to a head in recent decades, the responsible political authorities and their administrations are finding it difficult in some cases to make this forward-looking shift to sustainable economic activity. This also applies to the disposal of toxic waste in deep geological repositories. The storage of this water-soluble toxic waste has been continuing unabated and at full speed for decades. This is particularly true in Germany, which has specialized in this type of disposal in old salt mines. France followed suit in the late 1990s with Stocamine. However, both countries fail to recognize that «circular economy» does not mean permanently disposing of problematic waste with long or eternal lifespans underground. As the examples of the two final storage facilities in Asse mine and Stocamine show, poorly planned and implemented storage projects and increasingly vulnerable geology ultimately lead to remediation cases with unforeseeable consequences. The dumped waste must actually be cleared and disposed of properly. The affected population is rightly demanding this. In the case of Asse mine, politicians have now spoken out in favor of remediation. In the case of Stocamine, the opposite has happened. The political and administrative authorities of the French central government have been trying for decades to torpedo a complete remediation of the facility. This is despite all the fine statements to the contrary at the beginning of the project that the waste could be recovered and retrieved at any time.[1]

“The stuff has to go somewhere.”

In connection with the revision of Germany’s waste disposal program for highly radioactive waste, Baden-Württemberg’s Minister President Winfried Kretschmann coined a remarkable phrase for dealing with our toxic legacy. “The stuff has to go somewhere! That’s how simple the world is, and we have to face up to that.»[2] This off-the-cuff remark by a German politician may be understandable in the context of the German debate on phasing out nuclear energy. In terms of content, however, such a statement is unacceptable and represents a dangerous trivialization of the facts. Of the nearly 20 underground repositories for radioactive and chemically toxic waste established worldwide, three – Stocamine (F), Asse and Morsleben mines (BRD) – were already in need of serious and expensive remediation at the time of the interview with Kretschmann. And this after only a few years or decades of operation! Two other near-surface facilities in Baden-Württemberg – Kochendorf-Heilbronn (approx. 200 m below ground level) and Stetten Haigerloch (approx. 100 m below ground level) – are already showing similar developments in the medium term, with unforeseeable consequences for groundwater and its use. In particular, the Heilbronn underground toxic mine landfill, which stores a wide range of toxic waste materials under a medium-sized German city in the area of influence of a regional groundwater resource, could soon prove to be a cause for concern as a perpetual environmental hazard – definitely in contrast to the assessments of eternally safe disposal in this salt mine, which have been supported and defended by all Green environment ministers of the Land Baden Württemberg since Franz Untersteller and their administrations. This also applies to the current environment minister, Thekla Walker, who stated in a program broadcast by 3Sat in November 2025: «Nothing has moved in the last hundred million years,” said the Green state minister on the stability of the salt layers, adding that “no water has entered.»[3] These claims were already refuted in 2005 by statements made by Reiner Blümmel, former head of the Heilbronn-Kochendorf underground landfill sites: [4] Water inflows into this facility have been documented. However, it has been possible to seal off these inflows until now. But this will hardly be possible after the facility is closed and further long-term subsidence and creep movements of the layers in and around the storage environment occur.

Blatantly post from the Asse mine and from Stocamine …

‘The stuff had to go somewhere’ in the case of Asse mine and Stocamine too. Both cases read like horror stories of irresponsible behavior. Incompetent planning. Incorrect forecasts. Devastating storage practices that make it extremely difficult to retrieve containers today. Massive failure in incoming inspections. Non-transparent operational management. Catastrophic operational and risk management. Ineffective controls and thus failure of supervision. Decades of concealment of water ingress in the case of Asse mine. Grand promises of remediation and retrievability that are not being kept in the case of Stocamine. Costs are spiraling out of control. As far as the governance of the two projects is concerned: there is no questioning of management, no learning process in the management of the projects, and certainly no culture of error that deserves the name, in order to recognize unpleasant or dangerous developments in good time! Anyone who finds this hard to believe need only read the motions and investigation reports by French members of the Assemblée nationale (house of representatives) on the events at Stocamine in 2005 and 2018. [5] The story of the Asse experimental final repository is not much better.[6] And despite these clearly comprehensible mistakes, facts are distorted and a heavy silence descends on the unspeakable nature of these stories. At least, after massive protests, the Bundestag passed the “Lex Asse” in 2013, which stipulates the retrieval of all waste dumped in the Asse salt dome. However, the project is progressing at a snail’s pace, costs are climbing inexorably, and the feasibility and desirability of the recovery are under discussion. The situation is quite different at Stocamine.

The French central government is preventing the removal of waste from Stocamine

There, the responsible national authorities have been delaying the retrieval of the waste for over 20 years. Systematically. Against the will of the directly affected population and the entire Alsace region. It is interesting to note that the official German side has given and continues to give its neighbors in Alsace little support. Support is more or less limited to the municipal level and parts of the population. The governing authorities of the country, on the other hand, are reluctant and avoid taking a clear position in favor of a total clean-up as long as German groundwater is not affected. For the German side, however, the issue of the Alsace Potash Mine Basin has long gone beyond the problem of underground storage. The former potash mining area poses further risks to the groundwater in the Rhine Valley, which need to be thoroughly investigated and clarified. This also applies to the German eastern side of the Rhine Valley, which was corrected in the 19th century. As miners from the French mining unions reported to the “Commission de pilotage” investigation commission set up by the French Ministry of the Environment in 2010, the state-owned mining company «Mines de Potasse d’Alsace» left behind large quantities of liquid hydrocarbons deep underground during its 100 years of potash mining.[7] It remains unclear where these deposits are located in the extensive mine network, whether they have been recorded and localized at all, what quantities of liquid hydrocarbons can be expected, and via which paths they could be squeezed back into the groundwater near the surface, etc. In any case, the competent authorities on the German side should be extremely concerned about the presence of substances hazardous to groundwater in the deep subsurface of the widely ramified potash mining area, especially considering that the hydrogeology of the Quaternary groundwater in the former floodplain area of the Rhine Valley (e.g., river channels) is complex and variable and does not adhere to the changing flow directions in a flow environment with a complex channel architecture. And certainly not to national borders too. In the interests of comprehensive future protection of the Rhine Valley groundwater, the presence of these liquid hydrocarbons in the deep subsurface must therefore be clarified as a matter of the highest priority. This would also bring official German policy into play. In addition to the demand for the complete remediation of the Stocamine underground landfill site, this demand would also have to be addressed by the German side to French politicians.

And what about German politics and the Green Party?

So far, Stocamine has not been of particular interest to politicians in Baden-Württemberg or at the federal level in Germany. In any case, there has been a lack of clear signals from German politicians toward France in the past that could have exerted pressure on the French government and thus on the administration responsible for Stocamine. And now, just when Alsace urgently needs political support for the ongoing concreting work on the Stocamine «sarcophagus», an incident has occurred that could hardly be more grotesque. Let’s take a brief look at the events. On December 1, 2025, the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly was to comment on a motion to recover the waste from Stocamine. This was an important matter in order to build international pressure and get the French government to stop the concrete pouring work currently underway in the underground repository. However, this motion – worthy of support – was narrowly rejected in the aforementioned assembly. And why? The motion failed because the representatives of the German Green Party abstained from voting. Shortly afterwards, a Green federal politician justified the abstention in an email, arguing that Green politicians had to abstain in order to avoid forming majorities with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which had spoken out in favor of the recovery.

Now, as historical coincidence would have it, just a few days later—on December 5, 2025—the German Bundestag passed the draft law on pension levels and child-rearing periods (pension package). And lo and behold: it was passed against the 140 votes of the AfD and … the 77 votes of the Greens, including those of the aforementioned Bundestag member,[8]  who had prevented the adoption of the motion in the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly on Stocamine with precisely this argument! 

Well – what else is there to say?!

So what next?

Instead of dwelling on this embarrassing story, the German and Baden-Württemberg Green parties should finally address the issue of underground storage of highly toxic industrial waste in an unbiased manner. After all the bitter experiences with perpetual contamination in the North Sea and Baltic Sea and the toxic waste dumps scattered throughout Germany, it is high time to take an unbiased look at the strategy of storing toxic substances in underground salt mines, some of which are in danger of collapsing, and to reexamine ways of treating and detoxifying highly toxic substances in line with the basic principle of the circular economy. This applies not only to the Stocamine in the neighboring country and the contaminated sites of mining operations (especially hydrocarbons) scattered underground in the Alsatian potash mining area, but also for the salt mines in Baden-Württemberg that were established close to the surface – i.e., at a depth of 100 to 200 m – in thin salt deposits in karst-prone Triassic rocks and are still in operation today. After the catastrophic developments of recent decades, with toxic waste scattered everywhere in the environment, there is no reason and no justification for not initiating a fundamental review of the strategies used to date in dealing with this toxic legacy in the deep underground. This stuff does not have to go somewhere, as Minister President Kretschmann once casually remarked. Quite the contrary! It is high time that forward-looking policies were pursued and implemented so that advanced prevention, recovery, treatment, and solidification technologies can be developed and applied to finally put a stop to the cheap dumping and abandonment of highly toxic industrial waste deep underground.

[1] https://www.nuclearwaste.info/stocamine-ein-boeses-ende-zeichnet-sich-ab/

[2] Deutschlandfunk, 2011. “The waste must go where it was produced.” Hans-Heinrich Sander in conversation with Silvia Engels | November 24, 2011. Quote from Winfried Kretschmann: “The stuff has to go somewhere! That’s how simple the world is, and we have to face up to that. And the fact that we have now achieved a consensus on this is, like the nuclear phase-out itself, an enormous step forward.”

[3] https://www.3sat.de/wissen/nano-doku/251121-zeitbomben-gift-ndk-102.html (Minutes 11.19 to 11.25)

[4] Blümmel, Reiner, 2005, HMV-Schlacken als untertägiges Versatzmaterial, VGB-Workshop “Produkte aus der thermischen Abfallverwertung”, Freiburg, 20. Oktober 2005, S. 9-11, https://www.yumpu.com/de/document/read/6580335/vortrag-im-oktober-041005-uev-umwelt-entsorgung-und-

[5] Assemblée Nationale, 2005. Proposition de Résolution tendant à la création d’une commission d’enquête sur les conditions dans lesquelles les Mines de Potasse d’Alsace puis la société Séché ont créé et conduit l’exploitation du site de stockage souterrain Stocamine, présentée par Francis Hillmeyer, député du Haut-Rhin, 1.3.2005, No. 2116, http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/propositions/pion2116.asp.; Assemblée Nationale, 2018. Rapport d’information déposé par la mission d’information commune sur le site de stockage de déchets Stocamine, 18 septembre 2018, https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/rapports/micstoc/l15b1239_rapport-information

[6] Möller, Detlev, 2009. Endlagerung radioaktiver Abfälle in der Bundesrepublik. Peter Lang, Frankfurt.

[7] Comité de pilotage Stocamine, 2011. Rapport d’expertise. Annexe 11. P. 137-139. Juillet 2011. https://www.grand-est.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_final_copil-2.pdf. «Il souligne que pendant 100 ans d’exploitation et jusqu’ à la fermeture des autres mines du bassin, hors Stocamine, des substances potentiellement polluantes sont abandonnées au fond lors de l’arrêt des chantiers. Il reste par exemple au fond des machines complètes dont les réservoirs d’huile et de fuel n’ont pas été vidangés, des quartiers de havage intégral complets, des unités de traçage complètes, des kilomètres de bandes avec réducteurs, des locos etc.».

[8] Deutscher Bundestag, Gesetzentwurf zum Rentenniveau und zu Kindererziehungszeiten, Ergebnisse der Abstimmung vom 5. Dezember 2025. https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/plenum/abstimmung/abstimmung?id=985

[1] Buser, Marcos, 2015. Rubbish Theory: The Heritage of Toxic Waste. Reinwardt Academy Memorial Lecture, Amsterdam.

[1] marcos.buser@bluewin.ch