Technical cooperation to preparing an FEP catalogue, and the development of scenarios for the ERAM repository
Country / Region: Germany
Begin of project: January 1, 2014
End of project: December 31, 2024
Status of project: November 1, 2023
The surface facilities of the Morsleben repository
Source: BGR
The Morsleben repository for radioactive waste (ERAM) is to be decommissioned and sealed. This requires implementation of a planning approval procedure pursuant to the German Atomic Energy Act. This procedure involves analysing the long-term safety of the repository because the radionuclides need to be reliably isolated from the environment until they are no longer radioactive. The Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit gGmbH, BGE TECHNOLOGY GmbH, and BGR are currently commissioned by the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH (BGE)) in a project within the framework of the long-term safety analysis of the ERAM.
One of the principles for verifying the long-term safety is a description of the possible future development of the repository, which in turn is derived from an FEP catalogue (features, events and processes). The future development at the ERAM after sealing is determined by the nature of the components (features) of the repository area, as well as by future events and processes that may occur in the repository, or that may affect it from the outside. The possible geological, geotechnical, climatic and chemical-physical processes, as well as the components of the repository system itself, are described and looked at to assess their mutual interrelationships. The aim is to identify which potential process combinations can be expected, and what consequences these may have on the repository components, including the host rock and the overlying rock mass.
The FEP catalogue provides a transparent and comprehensible basis for deriving developments (scenarios). In deriving the scenarios, a classification into expected and deviating developments is made in accordance with international practice. The derived scenarios represent abstractions of the way the repository system could develop in future. The long-term safety of the developments has to be evaluated.