¶ An eventful May and June - Summary of past conferences and the Site Selection Day
This late spring and early summer have been busy for the scientists with exciting conferences and meetings covering topics related to nuclear waste repository research. At the end of May, the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union took place in Vienna, followed by the Site Selection Days organized by BGE held in Aachen, and in a few days after, the 8th International Conference on Clays happened in Nancy.
¶ EGU General Assembly 2022
The EGU General Assembly 2022 was the first-ever fully hybrid EGU meeting with over 12 000 presentations held in 791 sessions. The program group of Energy, Resources and the Environment was of particular relevance, since the sub-group of Geo-storage hosted two important sessions: “Towards a safe nuclear waste repository – assessment of barrier integrity, geoscientific, technological, societal and regulatory challenges and approaches” organized, among others, by some of the URS partners (TUBAF, TU Clausthal, BGR and BGE); and “Deep geological repositories – Geoscineces in the the site selection process” organized, among others, by UFZ.
Did you know that the next year general meeting is also already under construction? On the 14 of June, EGU tweeted a call-for-session, allowing the scientists to actively participate in the shaping of the 2023 EGU General Assembly. You can propose a new session with conveners and a description until 19th September 2022! If you are interested, you can follow the instructions on this link.
¶ Site Selection Days 2022
After the success of the previous two Site Selections Days in 2019 and 2021, came the third instance of the meet in Aachen organized by RWTH Aachen University and BGE. This year, particular focus lay on informing the audience about the current state of research and the site selection procedure. The contributed presentations covered topics such as geo-processing, THMC coupled processes, repository concepts and repository safety. The submitted proceedings and posters are still available for download here.
Other than the scientific feast, the program also included an interesting Science Slam and also provided a livestream on the 3rd Day for those who could join the event in person. Check out a recording of the Science Slam, the livestream of the 3rd Day, or the Photo Gallery under the Impressions section of the website.
¶ 8th International Clay Conference
Another platform for exchange of information about repository research on an international level was the 8th Clay Conference held in Nancy, an event co-organized by BGR and BGE among others. The conference covered discussions related to both natural argillaceous geological and clay-based engineered barrier systems distributed into 12 different topics including the characterization and modeling of undisturbed clay-based disposal systems and of disposal interaction processes with time, and the construction, operation, and long-term performance and monitoring of clay-based disposal systems. Check out the final program here.
The conference also offered a technical visit to the Meuse & Haute-Marne Centre of Andra - a deep geological disposal facility for radioactive waste to be built in France. As part this technical visit, one could tour the Bure Underground Research Laboratory, the Technological Exhibition Facility and the Environmental Speciment Bank.