‘Time as a safety factor in nuclear waste disposal’, this was the theme of the third interdisciplinary research symposium organized by the German radiation safety authority BASE. The symposium gathered around 350 international participants and took place in Berlin in September 2025. The Nuclear Natures team contributed with several interventions: in a plenary panel discussion, with a full session on the nuclear renaissance, with individual paper presentations and with a visual workshop.

The theme of time in relation to safety triggered the symposium participants to reflect on the German situation where protracted plans for a deep geological repository and thereby estimated long-term overground storage of high-level radioactive waste cause new worries related to current geopolitical uncertainties, including Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. The theme also spurred discussions on the intersections between different time horizons, such as the retirement of people holding certain professional positions which implies a risk of losing key competence and knowledge during the outdrawn process of negotiating the handling of nuclear waste in a democratic society.

The interdisciplinary ambitions meant that presentations ranged from topics such as anaerobic corrosion and geomechanics over social science lessons learned from ongoing decommissioning projects to the memorialization of post-nuclear sites and artistic nuclear rituals. The Nuclear Natures team contributions were well attended and the visual workshop turned out as a fun and creative event, while also speaking to broader discussions on the value of visual methodologies and the preconditions for establishing truly interdisciplinary research collaborations.