News from 2008

News Items

International Workshop on Iron-Bentonite Interactions

3 Dec 2008

James Wilson was invited to speak at a recent international workshop on iron-bentonite interactions, hosted by the Institute of Nature and Environmental Technology, Kanazawa University; Laboratory of Environmental Geology, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University; and the Laboratory of N…

Graph Grabber v1.5 Released

22 Nov 2008

Quintessa is pleased to announce the latest update to Graph Grabber - a free downloadable program that enables the recovery of graph data from an image file.

Generic Geological Environments for UK Radioactive Waste

29 Oct 2008

NDA RWMD is developing a Disposal System Safety Case (DSSC) that will set out the safety arguments that would be made to support the development of a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) in the range of different geological environments that may need to be considered in the UK.

ESL Goes to Washington

6 Oct 2008

Mike Egan spent two weeks in Richland, Washington State, during June as part of a project commissioned by CH2M Hill to explore the potential use of Evidence Support Logic (ESL) in the assessment of confidence in key issues relating to the development of a long-term safety case for in-situ disposals…

Options for LLW management at Sellafield

5 Oct 2008

Quintessa is currently working with Jacobs UK to support Sellafield Limited in carrying out options studies for the management of low-level radioactive wastes (LLW) that are produced and stored on the Sellafield site. Because of pressures on capacity for the storage and disposal of LLW, there is a…

Performance Assessment framework for CO₂

29 Sep 2008

In August Richard Metcalfe gave a presentation about Quintessa’s flexible framework for integrated Performance Assessment (PA) of geological CO2 storage at a session of the 33rd International Geological Congress in Oslo.

PHREEQC Pitzer database

26 Sep 2008

Quintessa has reviewed the completeness of the thermodynamic database developed by the Yucca Mountain project and developed software to convert the database format.

BIOPROTA Cl-36 Working Group

16 Sep 2008

Within the BIOPROTA international cooperation framework, Laura Limer and Graham Smith are involved in the chlorine-36 working group, playing a key role in the group's recent study: Investigation of Cl-36 Behaviour in Soils and Uptake into Crops.

IEA Greenhouse Gas programme meeting on Risk Assessment and Well-bore Integrity

14 Aug 2008

In June 2008, Steve Benbow attended the first joint network meeting of the IEA Greenhouse Gas (GHG) R&D Programme.

Henley Schools Environmental Science Prize Competition 2007-2008

16 Jul 2008

Quintessa is sponsoring a biennial competition for the best environmental science project from schools in Henley-on-Thames.

THERESA Work Package 4 Meeting

22 May 2008

On the 15th May 2008, Quintessa hosted the second Work Package 4 meeting for the EC THERESA project at the Leander Boat Club, Henley-on-Thames.

DECOVALEX-2011

13 May 2008

Quintessa and the University of Edinburgh have recently been awarded a contract from NDA-RWMD to participate in the international DECOVALEX-2011 project. DECOVALEX-2011 aims to improve understanding of THMC processes and apply this to the performance assessment of radioactive waste disposal facilit…

Swedish Regulatory Review of SR-Can

23 Apr 2008

The regulatory authorities for nuclear waste management in Sweden, SKI and SSI, have recently published the outcome of their review of the SR-Can safety assessment. The assessment was undertaken by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) in support of the development of a final…

Assessing Engineered Barrier Preservation - One Step at a Time

2 Apr 2008

So-called ‘engineered barriers’ (wasteform, canister/overpack, buffer/backfill) perform a critical role in the multibarrier concept for the geological disposal of radioactive wastes.

Scoping calculations for releases from potential UK Underground Gas Storage facilities

11 Mar 2008

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has recently undertaken a project for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), to examine the potential for leakage of natural gas from Underground Gas Storage (UGS) in salt caverns and depleted oil/gas reservoirs.