BGE, the implementer of Germany’s site selection procedure, recently outlined an alternative exploration approach. This contribution aims to detail and discuss it, based on BGR’s experience regarding the exploration of the subsurface. It focuses on geoscientific aspects and elaborates on the two main requirements to this approach, namely acceptance by the scientific community and capability to account for the specific characteristics of the host rock types while (still) ensuring comparability.

In phase II siting regions will be explored above ground. The exploration requirements for the siting regions define the methods to be used. BGR develops a database, GeM-DB, that allows the research for exploration methods. The database entries consist of a description, attributes and the evaluation of the suitability and applicability for the host rocks and exploration objectives. Filters and selection options allow queries of the database content to generate sequences of exploration methods.

This contribution outlines that the BGE, implementer of Germany’s site selection procedure for a nuclear waste repository, likely underestimates the time necessary to characterize claystones within potential siting regions. Our latest experience originates from two research projects that developed sequence stratigraphic frameworks for largely homogenous claystone successions in Germany. We reckoned a total duration of 5 years for the workload in each of the abovementioned research projects.