News from 2015

News Items

Risk Assessment for Proposed Salt Cavern Stabilisation in the Netherlands

21 Dec 2015

The Twente region of the Netherlands has a large number or redundant salt caverns that were developed by brine production. Some of these caverns are unstable and have the potential to collapse leading to the formation of sinkholes at the ground surface. AkzoNobel Industrial Chemical’s B.V. undertoo…

UK Carbon Capture and Storage - Down but Not Out

27 Nov 2015

On 25th November, the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced to the London Stock Exchange that: “Today, following the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, HM Government confirms that the £1 billion ring-fenced capital budget for the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Co…

Alex Bond Awarded Chartership

25 Nov 2015

Quintessa is pleased to announce that Alex Bond was elected as a Chartered Scientist (CSci) and Chartered Geologist (CGeol) of the Geological Society on November 25th 2015.

David Hodgkinson named Employee Owner of the Year at the UK Employee Ownership Awards

25 Nov 2015

Quintessa employees were celebrating last night after David Hodgkinson was awarded the Employee Owner of the Year Award by the BBC’s Martine Croxall at this year’s UK Employee Ownership Awards. This award celebrates an individual, irrespective of seniority who has done the most to promote and devel…

NDA Estate Supply Chain Event

11 Nov 2015

Quintessa, and our partners in the Nucleus Alliance would like to thank everyone who visited our stands at the recent NDA Estate Supply Chain Event. Please feel free to contact one of our colleagues in the right hand column for further information about how we might work together.

Preparation for the New DECOVALEX-2019 Project

2 Nov 2015

In October the DECOVALEX-2015 project (DEvelopment of COupled models and their VALidation against EXperiments) held its final workshop in Japan, hosted by JAEA in Wakkanai and the Horonobe Underground Research Laboratory.

Nucleus Alliance will attend NDA Estate Supply Chain Event

28 Oct 2015

The Nucleus Alliance will be attending the NDA Estate Supply Chain Event on Wednesday 4th November at EventCity, Manchester. This is the fifth year that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and its Site Licence Companies (SLCs) have provided this networking opportunity for companies supporti…

Old mines and new sinkholes along the Hucklow Edge vein in Derbyshire

19 Oct 2015

John Hunter, a Quintessa Associate, has recently published a paper on old mines and new sinkholes along the Hucklow Edge vein in Derbyshire [1]. On Christmas Day, 2013, a small group of walkers who were enjoying a ramble below Hucklow Edge, near the village of Foolow in the Peak District, were surp…

IEAGHG Risk Management and Environmental Research Network Meeting

12 Oct 2015

Richard Metcalfe and George Towler participated in a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IAEGHG) Risk Management Network and Environmental Research Network combined meeting that was hosted at the University of Southampton, National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) and w…

Uranium Intake Limits based on Chemical Toxicology and Radiological Significance

6 Oct 2015

Uranium compounds are both chemically toxic and radioactive. Both of these properties have to be taken into account when managing exposures to uranium, both in the workplace, and the wider environment.

AMBER 6.0: Compartment Modelling with Spatial Awareness and 3D Visualisation

2 Sep 2015

The AMBER software tool that allows users to build their own deterministic and probabilistic compartment models has undergone a major upgrade , including spatial awareness and 3D visualisation of models (AMBER 6.0). In addition, AMBER 6.0 has a significant update to the user interface that further…

Superior Paper at WM2015 Conference

1 Sep 2015

Quintessa is pleased to have received a 'Superior Paper' recognition from WM Symposia for the paper on post-closure safety assessment for the Canadian DGR that was presented by Russell Walke at the WM2015 conference in Phoenix in March of this year (see also the original news article). The 'outsta…

Quintessa becomes a COMSOL Certified Consultant

20 Aug 2015

Quintessa has become a COMSOL Certified Consultant reflecting the breadth and depth of our capabilities in the application of COMSOL Multiphysics® to model environmental and engineering systems.

Dusty Gas Model

5 Aug 2015

The flow of two or more gases through a porous medium is usually modelled using an Advective-Diffusive Model (ADM) which involves the linear addition of the diffusive flux, calculated using Fick’s Law, and the advective flux, calculated using Darcy’s Law. A more accurate approach is to use a Dusty-…

Updated Version of Portfolio Picker Free Software Released

23 Jul 2015

An updated version of Quintessa's free portfolio selection software, Portfolio Picker, has been released.The new version has a number of more advanced features. Users can now opt to use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to help make consistent selections of importance values. The software…

Laplace Transform Inversion Software: Free Download

23 Jul 2015

Quintessa has launched the first version of the Laplace Transform inversion software (LATIN), which can be freely downloaded from Quintessa’s web site together with a user guide. LATIN is designed to allow both quick inversion of simple one-line transforms, and inversion of more complex expressions…

Steel-bentonite Interface Modelling

13 Jul 2015

Some engineered barrier system (EBS) designs for the geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste include a bentonite (swelling clay) buffer and steel waste containers/overpack. One potentially deleterious process that may occur in the buffer is the alteration of swelling clay to iron-rich…

IAEA Safety Assessment Training Course in Brazil

9 Jul 2015

Russell Walke delivered an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supported training course in post-closure safety assessment and the use of AMBER at the end of June/beginning of July to the Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear (CNEN) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. CNEN is evaluating the IAEA’s gen…

Modelling Support for the FE Experiment

2 Jul 2015

The Full Emplacement (FE) experiment is run by Nagra at the Mont Terri underground rock laboratory (URL) in Switzerland. The experiment tests techniques for the emplacement of waste containers and surrounding backfill, and allows the response of the backfill and the host rock to heat to be studied.…

James Penfold Appointed Director

19 Jun 2015

James Penfold has been appointed as a director of Quintessa Limited, with special responsibility for coordinating business development across the company. James joins David Hodgkinson, Richard Little and Peter Robinson on the Board of Directors.

DECOVALEX-2015: RWM Second Annual Report Available

17 Jun 2015

Since 1992 the international DECOVALEX (DEvelopment of COupled models and their VALidation against EXperiments) research project has been at the forefront of advancing the understanding of coupled thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in support of the safe geological disposal o…

Portfolio Picker Free Software Released

12 Jun 2015

Quintessa has launched a freely downloadable software application, Portfolio Picker, for selecting an optimal set of options that together satisfy a range of constraints and criteria.

Long-term Cement Studies Meeting in Henley-on-Thames

15 May 2015

Quintessa recently hosted the biannual meeting for the Long-term Cement Studies (LCS) project at Leander Club in Henley-on-Thames. This international project is a collaboration between Nagra (Switzerland; the project leaders), JAEA (Japan), Posiva (Finland), RWM (UK) and SKB (Sweden), and seeks to…

Canadian Joint Review Panel Recommends the Approval of the DGR Project

12 May 2015

In January 2012, a Joint Review Panel was appointed by the federal Minister of the Environment and the President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). It was mandated to assess the environmental effects of Ontario Power Generation’s project for the development of a proposed Deep Geologi…

Nucleus Awarded Specialist Nuclear Services Framework Contracts

24 Apr 2015

The Nucleus alliance has been awarded 4-year framework contracts that provide contracting routes for the provision of specialist nuclear services to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and its Site Licence Companies, in addition to a wide range of other UK Public Bodies. Nucleus has been formed t…

Waste Management 2015

23 Apr 2015

The 41st annual Waste Management Conference (WM2015) was held in Phoenix, USA, on the 15th to 19th March 2015. The conference, which is organised by WM Symposia (WMS), concerns the management of radioactive waste and attracted around 2000 participants from across the world.

Video Shows the Scale of the Challenge at Fukushima

20 Apr 2015

Efforts to deal with the aftermath of the Fukushima accident have been relatively rarely reported outside of Japan in the last few years, but a recent video emphasises the scale of the problem. The footage was filmed by the first robot to enter the Primary Containment Vessel. Although not in the im…

UK Trade Mission to Central and Eastern Europe

14 Apr 2015

While there has been considerable focus on China, the Indian subcontinent and emerging markets in South America, the newer members of the European Union also offer important opportunities to improve bilateral trade. Strong growth in some Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries - right through…

Clays in Natural and Engineered Barriers for Radioactive Waste Confinement: 6th International Conference

10 Apr 2015

Steven Benbow, Kate Thatcher, Claire Watson and James Wilson attended the 6th International Conference on Clays in Natural and Engineered Barriers for Radioactive Waste Confinement in Brussels on the 23rd to 26th of March 2015. The conference was organised by ONDRAF/NIRAS (Belgium) in cooperation…

The npower Forecasting Challenge 2015

25 Mar 2015

Thomas Williams, who is currently a Bath University placement student working in Quintessa’s Henley office, and another Bath University placement student Graham Cooper recently made it to the final of a new forecasting competition organized by RWE npower.

Discrete Fracture Network Engineering

6 Mar 2015

In October 2014 Alex Bond attended the DFNE-2014 conference, an international conference on Discrete Fracture Network Engineering which was held in Vancouver, Canada. This was the first dedicated DFNE conference and on the basis of the interest, another is expected in 2016 or 2017. Alex was attendi…

Finnish Final Disposal Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel can be Built to be Safe

12 Feb 2015

In its statement submitted to the Ministry of Employment and the Economy on 11 February 2015, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland (STUK) notes that the spent nuclear fuel encapsulation plant and final disposal facility designed by Posiva can be built to be safe.

Concepts for Handling Norwegian Spent Nuclear Fuel and other Radioactive Waste

12 Feb 2015

Quintessa has contributed to the successful completion of a concept selection study (KVU) for an intermediate store for spent nuclear fuel and other long-lived radioactive waste in Norway. The study was undertaken for the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries by DNV GL AS and its part…