Politicians have been arguing for years about where to site a permanent storage facility for German nuclear waste. An agreement has now been reached that will allow the search to go ahead, but details remain unclear. The words that kept recurring at the talks were transparency, trust, and - above all - consensus. 35 years - that's how long it has taken for German federal and state politicians to agree to look again at where to site a permanent storage facility for German nuclear waste. German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier of the Christian Democrats declared this the "big breakthrough." All parties, he said, had agreed on the draft of a bill, with a view to passing it before the end of the year. It stipulates that a commission comprising 24 people from both politics and civil society should examine which sites would be suitable for the storage of radioactive waste. So far, the waste has been kept at the interim site at Gorleben in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.
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