https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2022021
Review Article
EURADWASTE’22 Paper – Host rocks and THMC processes in DGR
EURAD GAS and HITEC: mechanistic understanding of gas and heat transport in clay-based materials for radioactive waste geological disposal
1
ONDRAF/NIRAS, Avenue des Arts 14, 1210 Brussels, Belgium
2
NAGRA, Hardstrasse 73, Postfach 280, 5430 Wettingen, Switzerland
3
Andra, 1 Rue Jean Monnet, 92290 Châtenay-Malabry, France
4
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Kivimiehentie 3, Espoo, 02150 Finland
5
University of Lorraine, CNRS, GeoRessources, 2 rue du Doyen Marcel Roubault, 54518 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France
6
CTU in Prague, Centre of Experimental Geotechnics, Thákurova 7, 166 29 Prague 6, Czech Republic
* e-mail: s.levasseur@nirond.be
Received:
21
March
2022
Received in final form:
7
July
2022
Accepted:
8
August
2022
Published online: 26 September 2022
Deep geological disposal aims to contain and isolate radioactive waste from the biosphere. Repository systems are made of multiple barriers working together, typically comprising the natural geological barrier provided by the repository host rock and its surroundings and an engineered barrier system. Due to their excellent properties for the confinement of contaminants, including low permeability, high sorption capacity, and swelling/self-sealing capacity, clayey materials are considered as engineered and/or natural barriers in most repository designs under development in Europe. During the lifetime of the repository, clay barriers will be exposed to perturbations, among which those are resulting from gas and heat production within the system. It is important to verify that these perturbations will not be detrimental to the good functioning of these barriers. In this paper, it is shown how the two EURAD R&D work packages, GAS and HITEC use a combination of experimental and modelling approaches to increase the understanding and predictability of the impact on clay barriers of the fundamental processes and their couplings related to gas and heat transport respectively, providing building blocks to support the evaluation of the robustness of the repository concepts.
© S. Levasseur et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.