We expect the repository to help reduce the cost of beneficially influencing behavior and improving the efficacy of prevention and treatment practice and theory.
It is difficult to recreate, in a laboratory, the physico-chemical conditions expected in a repository and impossible to simulate the time scales involved without encountering kinetic effects that cannot be scaled back to natural process rates.
The other case corresponds to the study of an engineered clay barrier material in the laboratory subjected to hydraulic and thermal gradients similar to the ones expected in real repository conditions.
The temperature influence on the hydro-mechanical behaviour of bentonite was studied in this paper by experiments, which were carried out with the Spanish FEBEX bentonite compacted at dry densities expected in the repository (from 1.5 to 1.8 Mg/m3).
Three different modeling approaches with the (T, t) conditions expected in the repository were implemented to (i) investigate the influence of the surface area of the primary minerals and the diffusion coefficient on the evolution of the iron bentonite system and to (ii) compare the reactivity of the iron bentonite and iron COx claystone systems.
The paper discusses assessments of copper, iron and steel container corrosion behaviour under the environmental conditions expected, given likely repository host rocks and groundwaters, and comments on the significance of corrosion processes, the choice of waste container materials, and areas of research.
It studies the gas migration through a sand-bentonite engineered barrier system under conditions that are close to those expected in a repository for radioactive waste in a crystalline host rock when gas is generated by the waste through steel corrosion.
The conditions expected at the repositories are simulated in the laboratory with solutions of different compositions and pH.
Considering the long life expected in HLW repositories, parameters related to the durability of the low-pH concretes are analysed, such as the interaction of low-pH cementitious materials with groundwaters and the risk of corrosion if reinforcements are needed.
The repository is expected to become operational in 2025, with two further repositories planned in the future.
