History
Asse II was allegedly used as a research mine since 1965. Between 1967 and 1978 radioactive waste was placed in storage. The mine is operated by the German government, and was executed by the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Research was stopped in 1995; between 1995 and 2004 cavinates were filled with salt. After media reports in 2008 about brine contaminated with radioactive caesium-137, plutonium and strontium, politicians accused the operator of not having informed the inspecting authorities. On September 8, 2008, the responsible ministers of Lower Saxony and the German government concluded to change the operator. The new one, the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (federal office for radiation protection), will close the mine according to atomic law instead of mining law.
Read more about this topic: Schacht Asse II
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)