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Despite the earliest mention of the use of natural systems information in the assessment of repository engineered barrier system behaviour going back to 1955 and a seminal conference held in Princeton on radioactive waste disposal by the US Atomic Energy Commission (USNRC 1957), natural analogue (NA) information is often overlooked in safety cases (SC) for radioactive waste repositories. Emphasis is normally placed on laboratory, underground research laboratory (URL) and modelling output and, in part, this is justified as, historically, much NA data have been little more than qualitative (see the discussion in Alexander & Reijonen, 2022). However, a focussed national NA programme (see Alexander et al., 2015 ; Posiva, 2021, for examples) can produce quantitative data of direct relevance to the long-term SC which complements the shorter-term information produced in the standard laboratory/URL/modelling approach (Figure 1). Here, an approach (Reijonen & Alexander, 2022) to develop a structured, strategically-driven NA programme to support the national repository programme will be presented and discussed. |
