EURAD

The European Joint Programme on Radioactive Waste Management (EURAD) constituted a step change in European collaboration towards safe radioactive waste disposal through a sustained science and technology programme. EURAD focussed on activities of common interest between European Waste Management Organisations (WMOs), Technical Support Organisations (TSOs) and Research Entities (REs). EURAD aimed at the generation and management of knowledge to support EU Member States with their implementation of the Directive 2011/70/Euratom (Waste Directive), taking into account the different stages of advancement of Member State National Programmes. The EURAD work programme comprised ten RD&D work packages and two strategic studies. IFN-2 was involved in several work packages, addressing particularly the migration behaviour of radionuclides and the chemical evolution of the multibarrier system.

The work package FUTURE aimed at a quantitative mechanistic understanding of radionuclide retention in “real” and heterogeneous clay and crystalline rocks, quantifying the influence of key parameters of the systems to inform reactive transport models. The CORI work package targeted on an improved understanding of the role of organics - either naturally occurring or introduced by the wastes - and their influence on radionuclide migration in cement-based environments. The ACED work package focused on the development of a multi-process and multi-scale modelling framework to assess the chemical evolution at various materials interfaces and thermal, hydraulic and/or chemical gradients from the microscale to the disposal cell scale for intermediate- and high-level radioactive wastes. The work package MAGIC aimed at a quantification of the chemo-mechanical evolution of cementitious materials under the chemical degradation expected in repository environments to Increase the confidence in simulations by reducing uncertainties regarding input data and key processes. Key issue of the work package DONUT was to develop and improve numerical methods and tools that allow efficient modelling of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in time and space, contributing to an improved understanding of the upscaling of THMC modelling.