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Radionuclide Migration in the Far-Field:
The Use of Research Results in Safety Cases
Bernhard Schwyn 1 , Jürg Schneider 1 , Jörg Rüedi 1 , Jesus Alonso 2 , Scott Altmann 3 ,
Stephane Brassinnes 4 , José Luis Cormenzana López 2 , Aimo Hautojärvi 5 , Jan Marivoet 6 , Ignasi
Puigdomenech 7 , André Ruebel 8 , Cherry Tweed 9 , Tiziana Missana 10 , Ulrich Noseck 8 , Pascal
Reiller 11 , Thorsten Schäfer 12
Summary
1 NAGRA, Switzerland, 2 ENRESA, Spain 3 ANDRA, France
4 ONDRAF/NIRAS, Belgium, 5 POSIVA, Finland, 6 SCK•CEN, Belgium
7 SKB, Sweden, 8 GRS, Germany, 9 NDA, UK
10 CIEMAT, Spain, 11 CEA, France, 12 FZK, Germany
In the Integrated Project FUNMIG fundamental processes governing radionuclide migration
in the geosphere were investigated. Within the RTD Component 6 the involved Waste Management
Organisations (WMOs) and an Integration Monitoring Group coordinated the linking
of the scientific work performed in the Components 1 to 5 to its use in performance assessment
and monitored the improvements achieved within this project for the safety cases of the
individual radioactive waste disposal programmes in Europe. Boundary conditions for the
near-field of a radioactive waste repository, in particular radionuclide fluxes and concentrations
but also repository induced perturbations of the geosphere, were defined based on the
WMOs’ safety cases and on the outcome of the European Project NF-PRO. A comprehensive
catalogue providing concise information for each task performed in FUNMIG was compiled.
It facilitates the retrieval of knowledge acquired within FUNMIG and was used to map these
tasks to internationally accepted lists of Features, Events and Processes (FEPs) for clay-rich,
crystalline and salt host rocks. The subsequent evaluation revealed issues important for future
safety cases, namely the mechanistic understanding, quantification and up-scaling of radionuclide
diffusion in clay-rich host rocks and, for crystalline host rocks, the influence of colloids
on radionuclide transport and the up-scaling of reactive transport modelling in fractured systems.
Finally, the scientific outcome of FUNMIG was synthesised for each of the three host
rocks by collecting the individual tasks in Super-FEPs. The transferability of knowledge between
the host rocks is limited due to the host rock and site specificity of the research performed
in FUNMIG.
1. Introduction
The scope of the Integrated Project FUNMIG was to improve and supplement the scientific knowledge
on radionuclide migration in host rocks for future safety cases for the various European radioactive
waste disposal programmes. In the compilation of a safety case several groups are involved.
E.g., in developing the safety case for the Project Opalinus Clay [1] four groups, each with welldefined
roles, were distinguished:
The management group, responsible for overall management of repository planning.
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