ABSTRACT
Over the past 50 years in the Netherlands much effort has been devoted to the geologic disposal of radioactive waste in rock salt. Examples of such efforts are contained in the framework of the ICK, OPLA, CORA, and OPERA research programmes. Additional work has been done in several EU Framework projects like EVEREST, BAMBUS, PAMINA, and THERESA, and other research efforts. In these programmes and projects, safety assessments and detailed analyses have been performed for generic repository designs in rock salt in order to show that radioactive waste may safely be disposed of, i.e. the waste can be isolated from our living environment. The results of the “Evaluation of current knowledge for building the Safety Case for salt-based repositories” (Hart et al. 2015) will be presented, with a focus on the processes that drive the isolation of the waste: salt creep and crushed salt compaction. This knowledge has been developed over time by theoretical research, laboratory testing (a.o. in the HPT laboratory in Utrecht), and field testing (mainly in the underground laboratory in the Asse II salt mine). In this paper, it is elaborated how that knowledge has been applied in the safety studies for geologic disposal in rock salt.
