Geomechanical Know-how in Design of Underground Isolation System for Nuclear Waste
Event details
| Date | 26.10.2009 |
| Hour | 16:15 |
| Speaker | Prof Lyesse Laloui, Soil Mechanics Laboratory, IIC-ENAC |
| Location |
GR B3 30
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
In all nuclear power generating countries, the management of spent nuclear fuel and long-lived radioactive waste is an important environmental issue. A promising option for waste disposal is the burial in deep clay geological formations. A safety analysis for a geological repository for high-level and/or long-lived radioactive waste needs to be addressed both in repository design and in performance assessment. Therefore analyses and predictions about the behaviour of isolation barriers need to be based on robust science. This implies a good understanding of the fundamental behaviour of the argillaceous materials and state-of-the-art modelling. In many proposals for deep geological repositories in Europe, the argillaceous materials constitute either the main barrier or an important element of the multi-barrier system. They can be either the host material or engineered parts of the repository (i.e. buffer materials such as compacted swelling clays). The purpose of this seminar is to show the know-how of the Soil Mechanics group of EPFL, in identifying the fundamental mechanical behaviours of argillaceous materials in the context of deep repository experiments and analysing them in a new comprehensive Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical stress-strain constitutive framework.
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Béatrice Bouy