Former kali and rock salt shaft at Morsleben, now the principal shaft of the Endlager für radioaktive Abfälle Morsleben (ERAM), currently in the formal decommissioning approval process.
The Schacht Bartensleben at Morsleben was sunk between 1910 and 1912 as a second shaft required by mining police regulation to serve as an emergency exit for the Schacht Marie operation at Beendorf. It was sunk 1,600 metres south-south-east of the Schacht Marie site in the Gemarkung Morsleben, reaching a final depth of 522 metres. The shaft was linked underground to Schacht Marie at multiple levels.
Kali and Steinsalz were extracted through the shaft — with interruptions — until 1969. In 1965 the DDR began a selection process from ten salt mine sites for a central radioactive waste repository, and in 1970 the Schachtanlage Bartensleben was chosen. The first radioactive waste was accepted from 1971.
Between 1971 and 1998 approximately 37,000 cubic metres of low- and medium-level radioactive waste were emplaced in the underground workings. Following German reunification responsibility passed from the DDR Staatliches Amt für Atomsicherheit und Strahlenschutz to the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz and then in 2017 to the Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH (BGE). The acceptance of waste was ended in 1998.
A formal decommissioning approval process has been under way since 2005. The surface buildings were rebuilt entirely for the waste repository function; only a listed former gatehouse survives from the mining era.
The Kali- und Steinsalzwerk Bartensleben owes its origins to the Kaufmann Gerhard Korte, who founded the Bohrgesellschaft Gott mit uns in 1889 to prospect for kali salts in the area between Weferlingen and Eilsleben. Successful trial borings at Walbeck and Beendorf prompted Korte to acquire the dormant thousand-part Gewerkschaft Burbach of the Siegerland in order to relocate it to Beendorf — a legal device to circumvent the Prussian state reservation over mineral rights. The resulting Gewerkschaft Burbach sank Schacht Marie from May 1897; the shaft reached a depth of 370 metres in August 1898, intersecting the Salzgebirge at approximately 300 metres depth. Planmäßiger Kaliabbau commenced on 31 August 1898.
The Prussian Bergpolizeiverordnung required every mine to maintain a second accessible shaft as a Fluchtweg. Although the Gewerkschaft Burbach already held a nearby shaft at Walbeck, parts of the Grubenfeld Burbach were ceded and the Gewerkschaft Bartensleben was constituted specifically for this purpose. The Schacht Bartensleben was sunk from 1910 to 1912, located 1,600 metres south-south-east of the Schacht Marie complex in the Gemarkung Morsleben, to a final depth of 522 metres. The two shafts were connected underground. Kali and Steinsalz were extracted from the combined operation — with interruptions, most notably during and after the two World Wars — until 1969, when extraction ceased. By the end of the mining period the Grubengebäude contained between eight and nine million cubic metres of underground void space, the product of more than seventy years of extraction.
During the Second World War, from February 1944 until April 1945, the underground workings were used for forced and concentration camp labour. From August 1944 approximately 2,500 female prisoners from the KZ Ravensbrück, assigned to the Außenlager KZ Beendorf (a sub-camp of KZ Neuengamme), were forced to manufacture components for the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet aircraft and for the rockets V1 and V2 at depths of more than 400 metres. The shafts Marie and Bartensleben were known during this period under the cover names Bulldogge and Iltis respectively. For a period after the war the underground workings were used by the DDR for the underground fattening of poultry (Hühnermast).
In 1965 the Staatliche Zentrale für Strahlenschutz (SZS) of the DDR began searching for a central repository site for all categories of radioactive waste. After evaluation of ten salt mine sites, the Schachtanlage Bartensleben was selected in 1970 as the Zentrales Endlager Grube Bartensleben (ZEGB). A first partial approval for the rückholbar (retrievable) emplacement of 500 cubic metres of radioactive waste from an overfull central interim storage facility at Lohmen near Dresden was given in 1971/72. Between 1971 and early 1991 a total of 14,432 cubic metres of radioactive waste plus 6,223 sealed radioactive sources from DDR facilities were emplaced in the Südfeld, Westfeld, Nordfeld, and central zone of the Schachtanlage Bartensleben. An unbefristete Dauerbetriebsgenehmigung was issued in 1986.
Following German reunification the operating responsibility for the ERAM passed to the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (BfS) under the terms of the Einigungsvertrag. Between January 1994 and September 1998, acting under the Dauerbetriebsgenehmigung, the BfS emplaced a further 22,320 cubic metres of low- and medium-level radioactive waste from West German nuclear power station operations and the decommissioning of East German nuclear power stations in the Westfeld, Südfeld, and Ostfeld of the Schachtanlage Bartensleben. Emplacement was suspended in September 1998 following a ruling of the Oberverwaltungsgericht für das Land Sachsen-Anhalt. On 17 April 2001 the BfS formally waived any right to resume emplacement. The total emplaced volume is approximately 37,000 cubic metres of low- and medium-level radioactive waste with a total activity of approximately 330 Tera-Becquerel (reference date 31 December 2010). From 1987 to 1996, 6,445 tonnes of toxic cyanide-bearing Härtereisalze were also stored underground; these were retrieved after 1990 and transferred to the Untertagedeponie Herfa-Neurode.
In September 2005 the BfS submitted the plan for the Stilllegung of the ERAM together with the Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfung documentation to the competent authority of the state of Sachsen-Anhalt. An Öffentlichkeitsbeteiligung ran from October to December 2009 and generated approximately 12,000 Einwendungen. Mündliche Erörterung of the objections took place between 13 and 25 October 2011. The Planfeststellungsverfahren for the Stilllegung was still pending as of 2025. The BGE, constituted in 2016, took over the operational responsibilities from the BfS on 25 April 2017. The Stilllegungskonzept envisages the injection of approximately four million cubic metres of Salzbeton into the underground voids through pipelines, together with the construction of 22 horizontal and vertical Abdichtbauwerke, and the final sealing of both the Schacht Bartensleben and the Schacht Marie. The surface buildings of the Schachtanlage Bartensleben were entirely rebuilt when the site was converted into the ERAM; of the mining-period surface buildings only the former Pförtnerhäuschen survives as a listed monument on the ERAM site.