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Understanding the behaviour of gas in a geological disposal facility: modelling coupled processes and key features at different scales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

G. Towler ,
A. E. Bond ,
S. Watson ,
S. Norris ,
P. Suckling  and
S. Benbow
G. Towler*
Affiliation:
Quintessa Limited, Chadwick House, Birchwood Park, Warrington, Cheshire WA3 6AE, UK
A. E. Bond
Affiliation:
Quintessa Limited, Chadwick House, Birchwood Park, Warrington, Cheshire WA3 6AE, UK
S. Watson
Affiliation:
Quintessa Limited, The Hub, 14 Station Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 1AY, UK
S. Norris
Affiliation:
NDA RWMD, Building 587, Curie Avenue, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0RH, UK
P. Suckling
Affiliation:
Quintessa Limited, The Hub, 14 Station Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 1AY, UK
S. Benbow
Affiliation:
Quintessa Limited, The Hub, 14 Station Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 1AY, UK
*
*E-mail: georgetowler@quintessa.org
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Abstract

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Understanding the behaviour of gas in a geological disposal facility (GDF) is an essential component of analysing the facility evolution and long-term (post-closure) safety performance. This includes the impacts of gas on the physico-chemical evolution of the GDF, and the release and migration of radionuclides in water and gas.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Radioactive Waste Management Directorate is participating in the EC FORGE (fate of repository gases) project (www.forgeproject.org) and conducting independent research. Key research themes are modelling the impacts of different host rocks on facility evolution including coupled processes, and upscaling the effects of small scale features that can significantly influence the evolution of the whole facility.

Recent code developments have enabled coupled processes to be represented more realistically in models. This has significantly advanced understanding of facility evolution, as discussed in this paper, and will improve future assessment models. There is potential to further improve approaches to upscaling the effects of small scale features on strongly coupled processes, within the context of the EC FORGE project.

Keywords

processesgas migrationgeological disposalradioactive wastescaling
Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 76 , Issue 8 , December 2012 , pp. 3365 - 3371
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
© [2012] The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2012

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