(GRS 212) Self-sealing Barriers of Clay/Mineral Mixtures in a Clay Repository

A couple of years ago, GRS performed laboratory investigations on the suitability of clay/mineral mixtures as optimized sealing materials in underground repositories for radioactive wastes /JOC 00/, /MIE 03/. The investigations yielded promising results so that plans were developed for testing the sealing properties of those materials under representative in-situ conditions in the Mont Terri Rock Laboratory (MTRL). The project was proposed to the "ProjektträgerWassertechnologie und Entsorgung (PtWT+E)", and finally launched in January 2003 as the SB project ("Self-sealing Barriers of Clay/Mineral-Mixtures in a Clay Repository").The project was divided in two parts, a pre-project running from January 2003 until June 2004 under contract No. 02E9713 with PtWT+E and the main project running from January 2004 until December 2008 as a cost shared action of PtWT+E (contractNo. 02E9894) and the European Commission (contract No. FI6W-CT-2004-508851). The SB project is part of the EC Integrated Project ESDRED.