Safety assessment methodology for a German high-level waste repository in clay formations

Jobmann, M.; Bebiolka, Anke; Burlaka, V.; Herold, P.; Jahn, Sarah J.; Lommerzheim, Andree; Maßmann, Jobst; Meleshyn, Artur; Mrugalla, Sabine; Kneer, Reinhold; Rubel, Alexander; Stark, Lawrence; Ziefle, Gesa

doi:10.1016/j.jrmge.2017.05.007

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For the storage of nuclear waste, several European countries operate underground research laboratories (URL) to investigate the coupling of the different factors that control the response of the host rock during the construction and installation of a clay repository site (Delage et al 2010;Tsang et al 2012). The Opalinus Clay (OPA) formation is the envisaged host rock for geological disposal of radioactive waste in Switzerland (NAGRA 2002) and is also considered for a high-level nuclear waste repository in Germany (Jobmann et al 2017). Under in situ conditions, OPA has been extensively studied at the Mont Terri Underground Research Laboratory (Switzerland), where three different main lithofacies types were identified within the formation: A shaly facies, a carbonate-rich sandy facies and a sandy facies (Thury and Bossart 1999;Pearson et al 2003;Bossart and Milnes 2017;Lauper et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Deformation of Opalinus Clay at Elevated Temperature and Pressure Conditions: Mechanical Properties and the Influence of Rock Fabric

et al. 2021

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The mechanical behavior of the sandy facies of Opalinus Clay (OPA) was investigated in 42 triaxial tests performed on dry samples at unconsolidated, undrained conditions at confining pressures (pc) of 50–100 MPa, temperatures (T) between 25 and 200 °C and strain rates ($$\dot{\varepsilon }$$ ε ˙ ) of 1 × 10–3–5 × 10–6 s−1. Using a Paterson-type deformation apparatus, samples oriented at 0°, 45° and 90° to bedding were deformed up to about 15% axial strain. Additionally, the influence of water content, drainage condition and pre-consolidation was investigated at fixed pc–T conditions, using dry and re-saturated samples. Deformed samples display brittle to semi-brittle deformation behavior, characterized by cataclastic flow in quartz-rich sandy layers and granular flow in phyllosilicate-rich layers. Samples loaded parallel to bedding are less compliant compared to the other loading directions. With the exception of samples deformed 45° and 90° to bedding at pc = 100 MPa, strain is localized in discrete shear zones. Compressive strength (σmax) increases with increasing pc, resulting in an internal friction coefficient of ≈ 0.31 for samples deformed at 45° and 90° to bedding, and ≈ 0.44 for samples deformed parallel to bedding. In contrast, pre-consolidation, drainage condition, T and $$\dot{\varepsilon }$$ ε ˙ do not significantly affect deformation behavior of dried samples. However, σmax and Young’s modulus (E) decrease substantially with increasing water saturation. Compared to the clay-rich shaly facies of OPA, sandy facies specimens display higher strength σmax and Young’s modulus E at similar deformation conditions. Strength and Young’s modulus of samples deformed 90° and 45° to bedding are close to the iso-stress Reuss bound, suggesting a strong influence of weak clay-rich layers on the deformation behavior.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Deformation of Opalinus Clay at Elevated Temperature and Pressure Conditions: Mechanical Properties and the Influence of Rock Fabric

et al. 2021

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“…One of the proposed decommissioning techniques for HLW is a direct burial in DGRs. Such repositories should have room to house the HLW that has accumulated since the dawn of the nuclear era [43].…”

Section: Deep Geologic Repositorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation into the Current State of Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Management—A State-of-the-Art Review

Alwaeli

Mannheim

2022

Energies

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Nuclear power can replace fossil fuels and will have a decisive impact on the change in the approach to conventional energy. However, nuclear (or radioactive) wastes are produced by the operation of the nuclear reactors should be safely and properly disposed of. This paper assesses the uranium resources and the global state of nuclear power plants and determines the energy mixes in different countries using the most nuclear energy. Furthermore, this paper analysed the nuclear waste management and disposal and the depletion of abiotic resources, and the primary energy sources of a basic production process using electricity mix and nuclear electricity for a basic production (PET bottle manufacturing) process. The life cycle assessment was completed by applying the GaBi 8.0 (version 10.6) software and the CML method. In this study, we limit our discussion to high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF) waste. We do not consider waste generated from uranium mining and milling, which is usually disposed of in near-surface impoundments close to the mine or the mill. The investigation of waste management methods is limited to European countries. This research work is relevant because determining abiotic resources is important in a life cycle assessment and current literature available on LCA analysis for nuclear powers remains under-developed. These results can guide and compare manufacturing processes involving a nuclear electricity and electricity grid mix input. The results of this research can be used to develop production processes using nuclear energy with lower abiotic depletion impacts. This research work facilitates the industry in making predictions for a production-scale plant using an LCA of production processes with nuclear energy consumption.

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“…The background colors clarify the geological layers for context. For information on the geological layers, see [JBB∗17, JBH∗17, JBJ∗17]. This image and further visualizations of the nuclear waste repository can be found in the paper by Blecha et al [BRS∗19].…”

Section: Fiber Surface Extraction Algorithmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The system was simulated with the scientific, open‐source, finite element framework OpenGeoSys [KBB∗12, BFK∗19]. For more details on the model, its context, and the parameters used, see [JBB∗17, JBH∗17, JBJ∗17]. We show the correctness and the possibilities of our algorithm using this data.…”

Section: Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiber Surfaces for many Variables

Blecha

Raith

Prager

et al. 2020

Computer Graphics Forum

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Scientific visualization deals with increasingly complex data consisting of multiple fields. Typical disciplines generating multivariate data are fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, geology, bioengineering, and climate research. Quite often, scientists are interested in the relation between some of these variables. A popular visualization technique for a single scalar field is the extraction and rendering of isosurfaces. With this technique, the domain can be split into two parts, i.e. a volume with higher values and one with lower values than the selected isovalue. Fiber surfaces generalize this concept to two or three scalar variables up to now. This article extends the notion further to potentially any finite number of scalar fields. We generalize the fiber surface extraction algorithm of Raith et al. [RBN∗19] from 3 to d dimensions and demonstrate the technique using two examples from geology and climate research. The first application concerns a generic model of a nuclear waste repository and the second one an atmospheric simulation over central Europe. Both require complex simulations which involve multiple physical processes. In both cases, the new extended fiber surfaces helps us finding regions of interest like the nuclear waste repository or the power supply of a storm due to their characteristic properties.

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Safety assessment methodology for a German high-level waste repository in clay formations

Cited by 21 publications

References 6 publications

Experimental Deformation of Opalinus Clay at Elevated Temperature and Pressure Conditions: Mechanical Properties and the Influence of Rock Fabric

Experimental Deformation of Opalinus Clay at Elevated Temperature and Pressure Conditions: Mechanical Properties and the Influence of Rock Fabric

Investigation into the Current State of Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Management—A State-of-the-Art Review

Fiber Surfaces for many Variables

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