Radioactive waste disposal in European clay formations: science, safety and society

Monday, October 6, 2014
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
(Pacific)

Encina Hall (2nd Floor)

Speaker: 
  • Bernd Grambow

About the Topic: Large scientific and technological advances in many European countries and the establishment of the European technology platform IGD-TP have increased our understanding of how to construct, exploit, and close a future geological repository and how to reduce uncertainties in demonstrating its long term safety.  Essentially all major safety analyses have demonstrated that the risk of disposal will be of little consequence. Particularly durable confinement is assured in clay formations as is foreseen for disposal in France, Switzerland and Belgium, but strong confinement can also be realized in more water permeable granite formation by very effective engineered barrier system like those foreseen in Sweden and Finland. Still, there is not yet an operating geologic repository for highly radioactive waste worldwide. The first geological European repositories are expected to accept spent fuel, high-level waste in 2025. Yet there remains substantial public concern.  

Professor Grambow will lay out the current state of the art safety case, focusing mainly on the scientific programs, the ongoing planning of repository construction and the public debate in France, a country with one of the largest nuclear energy programs worldwide.  

About the Speaker: Bernd Grambow is a Professor of excellence at the Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France. He graduated at the Frei Universität Berlin, worked for one year at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Washington State), followed by research positions in Hahn Meitner Institute Berlin and Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. He currently holds the Chair on nuclear waste disposal in Nantes and is head of the Subatech laboratory on high energy nuclear physics and radiochemistry, a mixed research unit between the CNRS-IN2P3, the Ecole des Mines of Nantes and the University of Nantes. Coordinator of various European projects and former director of the national CNRS-academic/industrial research network NEEDS “nuclear: environment, energy, waste, society”, his areas of scientific expertise are radiochemistry, nuclear waste disposal science, geochemical modeling, radionuclide migration in the environment, chemical thermodynamics, and dynamics of solid/liquid interfaces. He has published 143 peer-reviewed research papers. In 2008 he received the Grand Prix Ivan Pechès of the French Academie of Science and in 2014 he became Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. 

 

 

 

Radioactive waste disposal in European clay formations: science, safety and society
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Nuclear waste disposal: I. Laboratory simulation of repository properties
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Geological disposal of nuclear waste: II. From laboratory data to the safety analysis – Addressing societal concerns
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