Selection of our Projects
We have compiled a selection of projects from our subject areas of reactor safety, decommissioning and dismantling, storage, disposal, safety, radiation protection and environment and energy, so that you can get an idea of what our work as a research and expert organisation looks like in concrete terms.
Against the background of a growing world population, the demand for energy, water, food and consumer goods is increasing. The environment is heavily burdened to meet these needs.
Nuclear installations are decommissioned and dismantled at the end of their operational use. Among experts, the term decommissioning covers all measures carried out after a nuclear power plant has been granted a decommissioning licence until nuclear regulatory supervision is no longer necessary.
Natural disasters, human error, technical problems or terrorism can all affect the safety of nuclear installations. The term reactor safety describes the task of operating nuclear power plants free of accidents and unintentional releases of radioactive substances.
Man and the environment are constantly exposed to ionising radiation. It comes from space, from the groud or from technical applications such as nuclear technology, research, medicine or industry.
Germany is currently looking for a site for a repository for about 27,000 cubic metres of highly radioactive waste. The future repository will be built in a geological formation of crystalline rock, salt rock, or clay rock. The radioactive materials are to be safely confined in the repository for one million years and retrievable for 500 years.
Researchers worldwide are working on small modular reactors (SMR) and microreactors (very small modular reactor, vSMR). Many of these new reactor concepts are being developed for specific applications and have special core geometries. In order to be able to simulate the neutron-physical behaviour of these cores, GRS is developing the simulation code FENNECS (Finite ElemeNt NEutroniCS).
Until a suitable repository is commissioned, radioactive waste will remain in interim storage. There are 15 storage facilities for high-level radioactive waste in Germany, including 12 decentralised storage facilities directly at the power plant sites and three centralised storage facilities at Ahaus, Gorleben and Lubmin.