Prof. Gareth Law and Otto Fabritius of the Radiochemistry laboratory participated in the Eurad2 work package (WP12) RAMPEC kick-off meeting at CIEMAT in Madrid, Spain. Eurad2 WP12 handles the study of 'Radionuclide mobility under perturbed conditions', and has many cooperating partner institutions in several European countries. We were happy to meet and exchange ideas both with old friends and new faces as representatives of partner institutions within the larger project.
Within the RAMPEC subproject, the RIP-team participates mainly in the Subtask 3.2, or the 'Experimental studies in the granitic system', which aims to produce good quality data and understanding of the behavior of nuclear waste-borne radionuclides in bedrock conditions, with various chemical and physical perturbation factors. The RIP-team will mainly participate in sample characterization studies of the cooperators' rock samples, and will provide, e.g., bulk and specific porosity, pore network distribution, and pore connectivity data for the group. The porosity and pore network data is valuable background information when interpreting the diffusion properties of rocks, and helps with the geochemical modeling effort. In addition to the sample characterizations, the RIP-team has an on-going Ra-226 in-diffusion experiment, in which the sorption and diffusion properties of Ra are examined. But more about these later! The work continues here in the RIP-team laboratory.
A great big thank you to the kick-off meeting organizers at CIEMAT and the representatives of all the partner organizations!