Euradwaste '08 - EU Bookshop - Europa

the high stakes involved, there is a danger that incorporating the results might become overcomplicated
and mask the real results.
‘If you compile everything with everything,’ cautioned Mr Johnson, ‘then you’re going for complexity
for complexity’s sake. Not every uncertainty is critical.’
‘I do believe very strongly that models should be fit to purpose,’ Dr Savage of Quintessa commented.
‘We can become obsessed by fitting the data from very short experiments. Short-term
data can’t automatically be extrapolated to long-term models.’
Mr Johnson concluded by saying, ‘We need multiple approaches to evaluate uncertainty. We all
understand the limitations of using individual models. If you understand your system well, you can
design around uncertainties. Joint efforts are needed to determine the priority areas with greatest
impact on the safety case.’
Daniel Galson of Galson Sciences in the UK spoke about the PAMINA integrated project and the
treatment of uncertainty in performance assessment. Commenting on the role of the regulator, he
said, ‘Most regulators want to match the level of scientific understanding and knowledge of the developer,
and this allows meaningful reviews of research, development and demonstration programmes,
safety cases and licence applications.’ He urged close dialogue between regulators and
developers, saying, ‘Dialogue must be controlled and documented and not lead to a compromise of
a regulator’s freedom to make decisions.’
Dr Jörg Mönig of GRS in Germany explained that the PAMINA project hopes to deliver a European
handbook on the state of the art of methods and tools needed for assessing the safety geological
repositories. ‘This involves so much paper you can’t imagine,’ he said. ‘Safety functions are
strongly similar on a national scale, but there are a lot of differences, even in terminology, in the
details.’
Education and basic research
Thomas Fanghänel of the EC JRC in Karlsruhe, Germany, presented some of the achievements in
basic actinide research in the ACTINET network of excellence. ‘There has been a decline in actinide
sciences in universities over the past decades because of lack of facilities demands,’ he said,
explaining that the network’s goal was to address this drop-off and get actinide sciences back into
the curricula of European universities.
The project encouraged big laboratories to open their doors to researchers, allowing them to use
their facilities, because universities don’t usually have the right set-up. ‘This is really not a simple
thing to do,’ he said. ‘We approached actinide laboratories with specialised competences, tools,
dedicated beamlines for actinide research and experienced scientists, and succeeded in gaining between
six and seven person-years at facilities.’ This effort significantly helped to bring young scientists
into the field.
On-the-job training was seen as crucial to the development of all the sciences involved, and many
speakers commented on the value of working on several sites and of continuing to train, no matter
what the area of expertise.
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