Euradwaste '08 - EU Bookshop - Europa

Future directions
There seemed to be consensus amongst the participants that future studies should focus on on-site
experimentation at potential repository sites.
Mr Patrik Sellin of SKB in Sweden expressed questions that remain for the study of geological disposal:
‘How can we upscale results of short-term studies to long-term projections? How can we be
sure we’re extrapolating results correctly to project to hundreds of thousands of years? Which questions
do we address for which periods of time?’
Laboratory studies can be very limiting. For example, the act of crushing rock can change its properties,
so studying the migration of radionuclides on a micro-scale can be expected to generate far
different results from studying the same phenomenon in larger pieces of rock or in the rock on-site.
Similarly, because it is extremely difficult to reproduce water-flow conditions in a laboratory, work
in this area must be done on-site.
‘Advanced geochemical modelling on sites helps generate understanding we can’t obtain in a laboratory,’
said Dr Missana of CIEMAT. ‘It is important for making projections into the future.’
‘We need to have several layers, several models because the system is so complex,’ added
Dr Altmann of ANDRA. ‘We need to use models that are appropriate for each scale.’
‘Data from lab and in situ experiments need to be placed in context with those from natural systems,’
said Dr Savage of Quintessa. ‘It is unrewarding to have separate programmes for experimental
and analogue studies.’ Mr Lemmens of SCK-CEN added, ‘Natural analogues give better stability
than we see in our labs. Natural analogues need to be understood better to explain this gap.’
Mr Buckau of FZK spoke about the need to invest resources in confidence-building, a sentiment
shared by Mr Wolf K. Seidler of ANDRA in France. ‘I am encouraged that there will be a new
technology platform,’ said Mr Seidler. ‘A complete cycle demonstration would do more for confidence-building
than anything I can think of. If the whole process was well documented and videos
well publicised, I think you could do a lot of good.’
Dr Simon Löw of ETH in Switzerland remarked, ‘One thing we’ve failed to do is conduct projects
with adequately long attention spans. Some of these questions need to be looked at for 20 years for
it to be useful. We need studies on a longer timescale.’
Mr Johnson of Nagra concluded, ‘It’s going to take decades to have a ready repository. I favour
moving ahead because we have a solid basis in fundamental research. In recent years we’ve started
spinning our wheels a bit because we can’t do our work on sites. If we were all doing this work on
site we’d learn our lessons along the way. Moving to the next step would make the quality of the
science better.’
12