Sponsored by the EU Framework V, Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme

The LowRiskDT project (Contract number EVG1-CT-2000-00020) is part of the FP5 - Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme. The project started in January 2001 and ended in December 2003.

Storage of HW in large quantities in abandoned underground mines is a fairly recent concept, but one that has attracted considerable interest in the past twenty years. The disposal of HW in mines in different geological environment has not been systematically investigated with respect to groundwater pollution and protection of the biosphere before the LowRiskDT project.

Objectives

The project investigated:

• The possibility of using abandoned underground mines for disposal of hazardous chemical waste with negligible pollution of the environment
• The properties and behaviour of waste-isolating clay materials and practical ways of preparing and applying them
• Development of tools/software to assess the transport of contaminants from the repository, stability, performance and risks associated with different repository concepts considering the long-term safety of the biosphere
• The isolating capacity of reference repositories
• The different concepts of handling of hazardous chemical waste.

Participants

There were several European business and academic centres that participated in the project. They are listed below:

• Geodevelopment AB, Sweden
• Wessex Institute of Technology, UK
• National Technical University of Athens, Greece
• Computational Mechanics International Ltd., UK
• DURTEC GmbH, Germany

WIT's Main Role in the LowRiskDT Project

The major contribution of WIT in the LowRiskDT project was in respect to the Risk Assessment for Disposal of Hazardous Waste in Mine Repositories. A code has been developed that employs the Discrete Fracture Model to calculate the flow and transport through fractured porous media.

• Learn more about the developed software
• View Some Results
• Related Publications