IAEA URL Network Meeting in Dunhuang (China)
Participants of the URL network meeting at Xinchang (China)
24 representatives of 19 nations participated at this meeting and reported about their national statuses of radioactive waste management. For a long time BGE TECHNOLOGY GmbH has been an active member of this board. Countries with URFs in operation gave an overview of their respective R&D work in 2018/2019 while other nations described their strategies with regard to R&D work in URFs.
Currently, there is no URF in operation in Germany. For decades, host rock-specific R&D work focused on salt formations. Due to the restart of the site selection procedure in Germany, BGE decided to intensify R&D work in international, generic URFs in clay and crystalline rock. The intention of this work is to deepen and broaden the German knowledge about disposal systems in other host rocks.
In China, crystalline rock is the most favoured host rock option. China started to investigate the properties of this host rock in the Beishan Exploratory Tunnel (BET). Several investigations and in-situ tests to analyse the host rock properties and to optimise construction and monitoring techniques have been carried out. A URF will be constructed in Xinchang. Both sites were shown to the members of the URF network during a field trip. On one day of the IAEA meeting, a workshop to analyse and discuss the site selection criteria and strategies in the different countries was held, where BGE TECHNOLOGY GmbH described and explained the German site selection procedure. The national examples and the results of the discussions were compiled in an IAEA paper, which also identified common and differing siting criteria and strategies. This working paper may be a starting point for a future IAEA report on recommendations for site selection criteria and strategies.