Workshop 7

Description

In many countries, radioactive waste is currently for the time being stored in various forms of dry containers, silos or vaults, of which the safety and longevity are questioned. Thus, deep geological disposal is widely agreed to be the best solution for the most radioactive waste produced. As each country has its own geological setting, it is obvious that each country must develop its own strategy for the final storage of their nuclear waste. Therefore, many countries have developed their own programs to find suitable techniques for the exploration of final storage sites for nuclear waste in the earths subsurface. Geological disposal involves placing radioactive wastes deep within a suitable rock formation where the rock formation provides long-term protection by acting as a geological barrier against escape of radioactivity and by isolating the waste from effects at the surface such as climate change.

In Europe Geoscientists are aware that especially European and national organizations are playing a prominent role in researching the geological conditions for deep subsurface repositories for different levels of radioactive waste, regarded as the best long-term answer. Single countries are at various stages of searching for a solution in which, depending on the geological settings, crystalline rock or rock salt or clay rock are the favored host rocks.

National and international research into airborne, surface, and underground exploration methods has been going on for decades. Tests to determine the integrities, permeability and mechanical properties of different rock formations were analyzed in national rock laboratories. However, Geosciences, and Geophysics in particular, play a pivotal role in presenting measurement methods that enable the characterization and selection of the most suitable geologic structures for deep geological repositories with the greatest possible integrity. In addition to the respective suitability of any of the methods, the limits and uncertainties of the individual measurement methods need to be investigated in relation to each national storage strategy.

The workshop aims at:

• bringing together the protagonists of the different countries for the exploration of possible storage sites for nuclear waste,
• analyzing the different and common exploration strategies within the different countries,
• exchanging the experiences with common and different exploration strategies,
• presenting successful case histories in the frame of the exploration of possible final storage site and to discuss failures,
• discussing further procedures in different countries and possible collaborations in the frame of the topic exploration of deep geological repositories for high-level nuclear waste.