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Club of Underground Storage, Testing and Research Facilities for Radioactive Waste Disposal - CLUSTER URL 2

Objective

The seminar planned in Mol from 27.09 to 28.09.2001 will address the R&D and demonstration projects running or planned in European URL's to stimulate further networking activities. Deep geological disposal is currently the most studied option for isolation high-level radioactive waste from man and his environment. URL's have been constructed with the aim to further characterise in situ candidate or potential host rocks (clay, salt, granite) and to test and/or demonstrate the technical feasibility of the respository concepts. They offer important opportunities for participation of research institutes from all Member States of the European Union. Beside a general overview of current and planned activities some projects will be described more in detail. A special session will address the approaches, capabilities and limitations of the models used in the respective projects for the EBS and their application in Performance Assessment.

- To get an overview of the current and planned activities in URL's.
- To discuss recent results of the major projects at URL's.
- To discuss the application, progress and needs in modelling related to large scale in situ tests.
- To stimulate further information exchange and international co-operation in the light of the EC recommendations to create the European Research Area (ERA), which in particular aims at Networking activities in Europe around common or shared research programmes.

Underground research laboratories (URL's) offer important opportunities for participation of research institutes from all Member States of the European Union. Such international co-operation has been established around the HADES URL in the Boom Clay at Mol, Belgium, the Mt. Terri Project in Opalinus clay and the Grimsel Fels Labor in hard rock in Switzerland, the Asse salt mine in Germany and the Asp Hard Rock laboratory in Sweden. Currently a new URL is under construction at Bure in the Callo-Oxfordian clay in France. All projects directly related to in situ experiments in URL's will be addressed by this seminar. The proposed agenda of the first day will be elaborated in such a way that all running and planned activities can be presented, as overviews for some projects while in more details for other projects. The CROP project will however be added to these presentations. CROP (Cluster RepOsitory Project) is a Thematic Network involving the main operators of URL's in Europe, the USA and Canada. It constitutes a forum where experience on repository construction, results from testing engineered barrier systems (EBS) in URL's and the correlation of theoretical predictions of important processes taking place within the EBS with the outcome of experiments performed in situ, will be shared and used for technical/economical optimisation of concepts of future repositories for high-level radioactive waste. The second day will be devoted to a session on modelling with particular emphasis on aims, approaches, phenomena and processes considered, difficulties encountered, future development and/or experimental work still required. An expert will be selected to co-ordinate this modelling session. He will be asked to help the organising committee in elaborating the instructions for authors in order to meet the proposed objectives and to wrap up the discussion of the session.

An announcement will be issued in April 2001, together with a provisional agenda of the seminar. Major projects carried out in URL's as part of the EC 5FP, key action 2: Nuclear Fission and their related modelling will be presented. The final programme will be distributed by the end of June. The conference will be held in Mol, Belgium, on 27-28. 09.2001. Proceedings will be published by the EC, early 2002.
The proceedings have been published as EUR 19954 EN (ISBN: 92-894-3640-9), price: EUR 29.50. An abstract of the publication can be found in the CORDIS Publications database under RCN 200214836.

Call for proposal

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Coordinator

BELGIAN NUCLEAR RESEARCH CENTRE
EU contribution
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Address
200,Boeretang 200
2400 MOL
Belgium

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Total cost
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