Greenpeace Germany claims that Merkel, in her role as the head of the federal environment ministry back in 1996, extended the operating life of a nuclear waste dump in the north of the country despite warnings that it might contaminate drinking water supplies.

Citing a 1996 letter from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) about the Asse II abandoned salt mine near Braunschweig, Greenpeace says that the BfS warned that "great difficulties" in Asse II could call into question the concept of depositing nuclear waste in salt mines; a practice in use at Asse II as well as the Morsleben repository.

BfS research found that storing nuclear waste in salt deposits posed great risks. The agency says if Asse II were to fill with water, people in the area would be exposed to 100 times as much radiation than the maximum allowed by current laws.

Greenpeace reports that the Asse II repository is taking in as much as 12 cubic meters of water per day.

Greenpeace claim that, despite the BfS warning, Merkel changed the existing law in April 1998 to add another five years to the operating life of Morsleben and to extend the exploratory work on another proposed salt mine dump near the northern German village Gorleben.

It is claimed the BfS letter of 1996 alerted Merkel to the dangers, stating that the Morsleben repository was "no longer tenable" while the planned final repository in Gorleben was "endangered."

Environmentalists call for parliamentary inquiry

Greenpeace demands that the German parliament hold an inquiry to investigate whether the government should have abandoned its plans to store nuclear waste in salt repositories after the BfS warnings of 1996.

"Merkel is a key figure in final storage policy and has to be made to testify to a federal parliamentary committee," Greenpeace nuclear expert, Mathias Edler said in a statement. "She knew that it isn't safe to store nuclear waste in salt. Asse and Morsleben should have been shut down immediately and work on Gorleben should have been stopped."

"Neither the possibilities of garnering information nor the financial means of an inquiry at state level are sufficient to clear up a scandal of these dimensions," Edler added. "All three dumps are operated by the federal government, so that now the federal parliament has to investigate."

An inquiry into the Asse II case starts Thursday in the parliament of Lower Saxony, the state where all three dumps are located. The state government, predominantly made up of conservatives from Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, has ruled out calling the chancellor to testify.

nda/AFP/dpa/AP
Editor: Nancy Isenson