Any financial penalties for breaking contracts will be paid by the utilities. No new reprocessing contracts will be allowed. These proposals have been repeated in the latest reactor phaseout plan. The government threatened to proceed with the amended Atomic Law if the utilities fail to agree with the new timetable. They in turn replied that the ban on transportation of spent fuel must be lifted first.
All types of waste are to be disposed of in deep repositories.
After reunification it was initially shut down in 1991, following expert advice as to the poor disposal practices in use. Under the reunification treaty, licences issued by the GDR continue to be valid for a maximum of 5 years in the case of NPP's, and 10 years for other facilities. In order to determine whether a new licence should be issued in 2000 or not, a detailed safety assessment exercise was carried out, involving a detailed geological and geotechnical investigation into the Allertal Fault Zone, in which ERAM is situated. BMU announced on 9 May 1997 that the licence should not be renewed because of the results of this survey. BMU also said that the last shipments to Morsleben would take place in 2003, although BfS announced in October 1998 that it was suspending all operations at Morsleben indefinitely, pending a complete judicial review.