During the project, five field campaigns were conducted for groundwater and mineral sampling, from deep boreholes located in Äspö and Forsmark, which are both engineered and natural analogues to industrial geological repositories for long-term disposal of SNF and HLW. The groundwater and mineral samplings aimed for perform laboratory incubation experiments (total 12 months) and to assess the impact of different water pre-treatment and incubation conditions on U removal rates. Several analytical techniques were utilized to reveal morphological features, U segregation, and U speciation on a micro-scale level and to link these data to isotope fractionation signatures. The studies were performed on materials selected from deep engineered and natural settings in Sweden including U-deficient and U-rich groundwaters, and laboratory experiments to estimate the dynamics and mechanism of U uptake mechanisms by carbonate minerals under different conditions.
The results of the project were reported at three international conferences: 19th Radiochemical Conference, EGU General Assembly 2022, Goldschmidt ’22 and published in one peer-reviewed article from Springer Nature Group: Communications Earth & Environment. This publication was followed by more than 80 outreach activities in social and scientific-popular resources in several countries: Sweden, Germany, Spain, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Vietnam, with nearly 60 million reaches as of May 2023. The published article summarizes project’s main findings, received a lot of recognition in all major Swedish newspapers, in the popular scientific press in the USA, and through Europas Press to major Spanish speaking newspapers. Several spin-off projects have been initiated with the industrial partner and the host institution following the success of the MSCA project. The interplay between microbiology and geochemistry has involved fruitful multidisciplinary collaborations nationally and internationally.
The project leader and network already have a good dialogue with the nuclear waste management (SKB), which assures that the results will be exploited and directly implemented in the planning of a nuclear waste repository, and thus of direct societal relevance. Still, the implications are more far-reaching and broader than for repository planning and involve groundwater quality and contaminated area remediation, which are under the responsibility of a wide number of stakeholders and authorities, from local to international levels as the following. Key stakeholders of the project are policymakers from municipal and industrial fields and academy experts involving (bio)geochemists, environmental scientists, remediation engineers, and microbiologists. The communication, guidance and supporting activities are directly arranged by several environmental agencies and research institutes.
