Galson Sciences Ltd - Monitoring plans and programmes
GSL staff have been responsible for conducting a range of studies on monitoring plans and programmes for several clients worldwide:
- As part of the scientific team for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the United States, we have helped to:
- develop waste acceptance criteria (WAC) and review waste characterisation techniques to meet the WAC,
- develop operational and post-closure monitoring strategies to meet regulatory requirements and programme needs,
- rank monitoring parameters by significance,
- assess monitoring practicality,
- evaluate the feasibility of producing meaningful data,
- develop procedures to feed monitoring data into performance assessment (PA) and compliance studies, and
- develop procedures to handle unexpected results (trigger values).
- GSL staff have provided assistance to the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) in the geological and hydrogeological characterisation of the Tono area in Japan. This has included:
- interpretation of geological, geophysical, hydrogeological and hydrochemical data,
- planning of boreholes,
- geological and hydrogeological modelling,
- monitoring of regional hydrogeology, and
- development of scientific programme surrounding the excavation of the Mizunami underground research laboratory (URL) shafts, focusing on the hydrogeological response to shaft sinking.
- GSL co-ordinated the European Commission (EC) BORIS Project, which collected and analysed data from Russian sites where liquid radioactive waste has been injected into the ground. The impact of the waste injections has been monitored through a numerous observation boreholes and a seismic monitoring network. In addition to co-ordinating the project, GSL staff collaborated with Nirex in the design of a historical database of information from the sites and the collection, archiving and analysis of the data.
- GSL staff have been involved in project evaluating the application of geophysical techniques during site characterisation for the Radioactive Waste Management Funding and Research Center (RWMC), and Kajima Corporation of Japan. GSL's role was to evaluate geophysical techniques that have been useful in developing interpretations of the geosphere during site characterisation.
- GSL staff have assisted the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in the coordination of an international project on the engineered barrier system. This work has included collation and interpretation of responses from a wide range of national waste management programmes to an NEA questionnaire that addressed the issue of repository monitoring.
- GSL staff have been involved in baseline site characterisation in the UK for Nirex and the Environment Agency (EA), and in Finland for Posiva Oy.
- We have developed a high-level monitoring plan for the development of low-level waste (LLW) facilities at Dounreay.