The Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) will host the third Interdisciplinary Research Symposium on the Safety of Nuclear Disposal Practices (safeND) from 17 to 19 September 2025 in Berlin (Radialsystem). The conference will give scientists from a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to present their research with regard to the safe handling and disposal of radioactive waste, and to discuss their findings in an intra- and interdisciplinary environment. The conference also aims to identify open research questions and needs.

We hereby invite you to propose contributions to the symposium. You can submit your abstract for an oral or a poster presentation via theCall for Contributions homepage until 11 March 2025:

https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/safeND2025/sessionprogramme

For panel discussion or workshop proposals (deadline also 11 March 2025), please use the form below:

https://webforms.copernicus.org/safeND2025/workshop-panel-request/

We encourage the submission of contributions that cut across disciplinary borders to strengthen the interdisciplinary character of safeND. Moreover, we would like to receive abstracts in commonly understandable language, which also makes the individual contributions interesting for participants that do not belong to the inner circle of your discipline.

The focus theme of safeND 2025 will be:

Time as a safety factor: opportunities and challenges of timely nuclear waste disposal

Developing and implementing disposal concepts for nuclear waste that ensure long-term safety is a complex sociotechnical challenge requiring, in particular, public participation, extensive geological exploration, engineering research, numerical simulation and long-term awareness preservation.

The technical vulnerabilities of such a waste disposal concept are not the only dangers to society, however. It’s essential that a timely implementation also is accounted for as a central safety factor. The imperative nature of timing as a safety factor derives not only from the fact that the radioactivity of nuclear waste is currently at its highest level and will decay over time, but also from the fact that high-level radioactive waste is currently stored above ground in most parts of the world.

Such above-ground storage makes this waste vulnerable to various geopolitical threats, including military conflicts, radical alterations to existing political institutions and to consequences of climate change. So how can we properly account for the factor of time when evaluating the safety of nuclear disposal programmes?

During the Call for Contributions, you can submit your abstracts to 32 different proposed sessions.

Please note that the realization of these sessions depends on the number of submissions for each session as well as the total capacity.

Details about the individual session proposals and the submission process for your abstract can be found on the Call for Contributions homepage.

The venue will be Radialsystem in Berlin. safeND will start on 17 September 2025 in the morning, and end on 19 September 2025 in the afternoon. An icebreaker event is planned for the evening of 16 September 2025 and the ›Young safeND‹, which is intended to attract junior scientists, will take place at the evening of 17 September 2025.

For more information on safeND 2025, please refer to our website: https://www.base.bund.de/en/research/events/research-symposium/_documents/safend-25.html.