Radioactive Waste Management

Nuclear Energy Agency

ISSN :
1990-0325 (online)
ISSN :
1990-0333 (print)
DOI :
10.1787/19900325
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A series of publications from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency on various aspects of radioactive waste management. The publications in this series of analytical reports and conference proceedings focus on the development of strategies for a safe, broadly acceptable management of sustainable and all types of radioactive waste and materials.

Also available in: French
 
Stability and Buffering Capacity of the Geosphere for Long-term Isolation of Radioactive Waste

Stability and Buffering Capacity of the Geosphere for Long-term Isolation of Radioactive Waste

Application to Argillaceous Media - "Clay Club" Workshop Proceedings - Braunschweig, Germany, 9-11 December 2003 You do not have access to this content

Authors:
OECD, Nuclear Energy Agency
Publication Date :
04 Mar 2005
Pages :
244
ISBN :
9789264009097 (PDF) ; 9789264009080 (print)
DOI :
10.1787/9789264009097-en

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Most experts worldwide agree that radioactive waste disposal in engineered facilities, or repositories, located in appropriate formations deep underground, provide a suitable waste management option for protecting humans and the environment now and in the future.  These conference proceedings establish the scientific basis for stability and buffering capacity of deep geological waste management systems. The proceedings synthesise the main outcomes of the workshop and present a compilation of the related abstracts.

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  • Introduction
    Disposal of high-level and/or long-lived radioactive waste in engineered facilities, or repositories, located underground in suitable geological formations, is being widely investigated world wide as a long-term management solution. This is in order to protect humans and the environment both now and in the future. From a quantitative point of view, a repository is said to be safe if it meets the relevant safety standards, such as internationally recommended or specified by the responsible national...
  • General Framework
    Geological repositories are designed to protect humans and the environment from the hazards associated with long-lived radioactive waste. The repositories for disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) generally rely on a multi-barrier system to isolate waste from the biosphere. The multibarrier system typically comprises an engineered barrier system and the geological barrier provided by...
  • Exogenic and Endogenic Processes
    We describe briefly here the main mechanisms and time scales involved in natural and anthropogenic climate variability, based on quantitative paleoclimatic reconstructions from natural archives and climate model simulations: the large glacial-interglacial cycles of the last million years (the Quaternary), lasting typically a hundred thousand years, triggered by changes in the solar...
  • Agruments to Support Confidence in the Stability of Clays Considered as Potential Host Formations
    The radioactive waste disposal policy in the Federal Republic of Germany is based on the principle that all types of radioactive waste must be disposed of in deep geological formations. Because of the favourable properties of rock salt and the existence of thick rock salt formations in Germany, so far most of the research in the field of radioactive waste disposal sites was focused...
  • Reaction of Argillaceous Media vis-à-vis Natural Perturbations and Geosphere Evolutions Buffering
    The capacity of fractures in argillaceous rocks to self-heal (or become, with the passage of time, less conductive to groundwater) is often cited as a primary factor favouring the choice of such materials as host rocks for deep disposal. The underlying processes which contribute to self-healing can be broadly subdivided into: (a) mechanical and hydromechanical processes linked to the change in the stress field, movement of porewater, swelling, softening, plastic deformation and creep, and (b) geochemical processes linked to chemical alterations, transport in aqueous solution...
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