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The job of cleaning up after 40 years of uranium mining is one of the
less attractive tasks that faces reunited Germany. Plans to flatten the
radioactive slag heaps and fill in the tunnels that riddle the landscape
of the Erzgebirge region are slowly taking shape. Meanwhile the local people
are left to consider a future without the region’s largest employer.

Until the end of the 1980s, East Germany was the world’s third biggest
producer of uranium ore after the US and Canada. Now, the demand for German
uranium has dried up. The end of the Cold War has brought an end to the
stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants in the east have
been closed because they fail to meet safety standards in the new Germany.

The Wismut AG mining operation, originally run by the Soviet Union and
then as a joint East German-Soviet enterprise, has blighted an area of 1000
square kilometres. Hundreds of slag heaps, some as big as the surrounding
hills, dot the landscape. These must be levelled or covered with soil and
regrassed. Some 1600 kilometres of mine workings between 90 and 2000 metres
deep must be filled in or flooded, and more than 300 shafts and tunnels,
85 ventilation shafts and 18 waste ponds must be decontaminated and closed
off or reclaimed.

While plans are being drawn up to divide up the mammoth task, representatives
of the Soviet and German governments and officials from Wismut are negotiating
the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from its half of the enterprise.

‘The project is huge,’ says Klaus Martinoni of Germany’s Federal Office
for Radiological Hygiene in Munich, ‘perhaps bigger than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.’
Estimates of the cost of cleaning up and closing the mines range from 2
billion Pounds to 5 billion.

The residents of the mining towns, many of whom are now unemployed,
are growing increasingly impatient with the authorities. New jobs for the
miners will materialise only if companies move in from outside the area.
Most are discouraged by media reports of high levels of radioactive contamination,
and are likely to invest in the region only if the area is thoroughly decontaminated.

‘What we need now is a factual picture of the dangerous places and to
discover what is and isn’t dangeorus,’ says Walter Rohnsch, the coordinator
of government investigations in the region, who worked previously for East
Germany’s National Board for Atomic Safety and Radiation Protection.

Added to the problems of uranium is radon, which is found in pitchblende
and other uranium ores. The level of radiation in some homes is as high
as 100,000 becquerels a square metre. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs say that the radon may
not be the result of Wismut’s operations, but of earlier mining activity.

Since the Middle Ages, miners have dug for silver, nickel and cobalt.
When they brought up pitchblende containing uranium they wrote it off as
useless and dumped it in slag heaps. Later, people built their houses over
old mine shafts and on the slag heaps.

According to Rohnsch, the reorganisation of local and federal authorities
after reunification has delayed efforts to clean up the region. A joint
East-West commission began to discuss the various approaches to cleaning
up in 1989. But the upheavals within government and at Wismut mean that
it is still impossible to assign projects or funding for the reclamation
work. ‘The administrative reorganisation has prevented us from working through
the plan in an orderly fashion. Everybody wants to help, but we don’t yet
have a budget,’ said Rohnsch.

Wismut wants to play a part in the massive cleanup because it will keep
at least some of its employees in work. Officials from Wismut admit that
their credibility is low, but they stress that the company has expertise
that will be invaluable.

‘In the Federal Republic, they’ve got little experience with uranium
mining,’ said Siegmar Richter, who is in charge of Wismut’s radiological
studies in the region. ‘Over there (in western Germany) the biggest slag
heap related to uranium mining is about 170,000 cubic metres. Here in Ronneburg,
we’ve got one that’s 130 million cubic metres.’

Germany’s environment ministry is arranging to have the data Wismut
has collected over the years confirmed by independent researchers. Much
of the information has been kept secret for decades. Experts have also been
brought in from Australia, Canada and the US to evaluate ways to reclaim
the land. Despite the advice of foreign experts, Richter says, the area’s
problems will not be solved quickly. ‘One of the main problems is determining
the natural levels of radiation for the region,’ he said. ‘Until we’ve determined
those, we have no idea of how far we have to go with decontamination measures.’

On the slag heaps, the level of radioactivity ranges from 30 to 50 becquerels
per cubic metre. In the two massive seepage ponds that are still in use,
radioactivity reaches levels of 10 becquerels per gram. ‘We’re going to
have to work on cleaning up the slag heaps and operate the seepage ponds
until the year 2000,’ says Richter.

In some places, Wismut’s workers have begun some reclamation work. But,
because of the company’s uncertain future, little money is available to
buy equipment. In Schlema, Wismut workers have begun to flatten one slag
heap with three or four dump trucks, a bulldozer and two steam shovels.
The tailings from the heap will be used to fill in an opencast pit elsewhere
in the town. The truck drivers estimate that the job would take five years
without better equipment.

Despite the lack of funds and uncertainty, the people of the mining
towns are doggedly trying to improve their own prospects. Before the Second
World War, Schlema and Schneeberg were both resorts as well as mining towns.
Now, the local government proposes opening a mining museum and an institute
for the study of the effects of radon, and building a geothermal energy
plant.