Iron mine in Salzgitter (Germany) shut down in 1976 and intended as a repository for radioactive waste with negligible heat generation and for large-scale components from nuclear facilities. On 31st Aug. 1982, application for initiation of the procedure for official approval of the plan for ultimate waste disposal was filed. On June 5, 2002, the licence for the emplacement of a waste package volume of 300.000 m3 of radioactive waste with negligible heat generation was issued. After final court decisions in 2007 the former mine will be converted into a repository to be ready for waste storage in 2015.

However, in March 2013, the German Society for the construction and operation of waste repositories (Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Bau und Betrieb von Endlagern für Abfallstoffe mbH – DBE) announced that the commissioning of the repository could be delayed until 2021 due to additional renovation work.

The Federal Agency for Final Storage (Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung – BGE), operator of the repository since April 2017, announced in a press release on 8th March 2018 that it expects the construction work to be completed in the first half of 2027.