TRANSFER

The preservation of knowledge and the continuous fostering of early-career researchers are paramount for projects spanning several decades such as the final disposal of high-level nuclear waste. The interdisciplinary graduate school TRANSFER, organised jointly by five Helmholtz-Centres and five Universities, is dedicated to this task, offering PhD students the opportunity to investigate geological disposal in claystones through mutually complementary projects. It integrates various disciplines, qualifying the next generation of scientists for roles in academia, industry, regulatory authorities, and policymaking within radioactive waste disposal and beyond. TRANSFER is jointly funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) and is coordinated by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences

The focus of TRANSFER is on the evaluation of the suitability of claystone formations as repository host rocks, paying particular attention to spatial and temporal heterogeneities and their impact on radionuclide migration and retention. Opalinus Clay from southern Germany serves as a reference material to transfer findings from previous Swiss studies, contextualizing them within a broader geological framework. Subsequently, the acquired insights will be applied to other clay formations, e.g. those in the North German Basin. The aim of the PhD project at IFN-2 is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the retention of the radionuclides 226Ra and 90Sr in heterogeneous, carbonate-bearing claystones through a combination of experiments and simulations, and to elucidate the competition between sorption and co-precipitation processes, as well as the reversibility of these processes. The findings will contribute to the improvement of process models for the cross-scale description and simulation of radionuclide migration in geological repository systems.