Welcome to the Winter 2007 edition of Quintessa Update, the electronic newsletter of Quintessa Limited

As part of the EC Co2GeoNet programme, Quintessa staff working with colleagues from the British Geological Survey have developed and applied system-level models for the volcanic Latera region north of Rome. The code used was QPAC-CO2, which is based on Quintessa's general purpose modeling tool QPAC. Information on the site was supplied by staff from the University of Rome, which has been involved in studying the area for more than 20 years. This work was funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, now the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform. For more information, please contact Philip Maul.

Have you ever wanted to include a graph in a paper or report when you have lost or do not have access to the original numerical data? For example you might have a scanned copy of a graph at poor quality/resolution or have only an image file of the graph, which you would like to reformat but do not have the original data.

Quintessa has developed GraphGrabber to enable users to retrieve data from graphs in the form of an image file by tracing over the image and capturing the data. GraphGrabber allows new graphs to be plotted using the recovered data or the data to be exported to standard spreadsheet packages.

Please click here for more information and to download GraphGrabber.

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. As in Quintessa's ongoing work to support decision making for plutonium-contaminated wastes, our role is to provide guidance, independent facilitation, audit and assurance for the public consultation process and the associated evaluation of alternative management strategies. For more information, please contact June Shield at Sellafield.

Quintessa recently ran a one-week workshop in Performance Assessment (PA) for technical and project management staff from UKAEA Dounreay. The workshop was based on training material developed for the IAEA, and adapted to reflect Dounreay-specific issues. It focused on the use of PA to determine short and long-term safety and environmental impacts from radioactive waste disposal, radioactively contaminated land and authorised radioactive discharges. Further information can be obtained from James Penfold.

As part of the EC NF-PRO project, Quintessa is developing new models for the alteration of bentonite buffers in contact with corroding iron-based radioactive waste canisters, to understand their possible long-term transformation to non-swelling iron silicates. In particular, the QPAC-EBS code is being used to model the Ostwald Step Process to capture the sequential formation of Fe-bearing minerals observed in natural systems.

Quintessa is pleased to welcome Elizabeth Cairns to the Henley office, Laura Limer to the Warrington office and John Barker as a Quintessa associate. Elizabeth studied for a BSc in biology and worked in scientific laboratories before joining Quintessa as an administrative assistant. Laura studied mathematics before embarking on a PhD on the biodiversity in ecosystem functioning and postdoctoral research into the validation of ecosystem models using remotely sensed data. John has thirty years experience in hydrogeology at BGS and UCL in particular related to the development of novel mathematical and computational techniques and their application to transport in fractured aquifers, pumping tests, well hydraulics and tracer tests.

In addition, Quintessa is pleased to welcome Adrian Gallardo, Shoko Tachibana and Colin Walker to Quintessa Japan. Adrian has a PhD in geo-environmental sciences and works on modelling the saline interface at coastal sites. Shoko has a master's degree in urban and environment engineering and has worked on the simulation of groundwater flow. Colin has a PhD in aqueous geochemistry and is currently seconded to JAEA developing low alkaline cements and modelling cement/host rock interactions.