Climate change and landscape development in post-closure safety assessment of solid radioactive waste disposal: Results of an initiative of the IAEA

Tobias Lindborg, Mike Thorne, E. Andersson, Jens Karl Becker, Jenny Brandefelt, Tiberio Cabianca, Martin Gunia, Ari T.K. Ikonen, Emma Johansson, Ville Kangasniemi, Ulrik Kautsky, Gerald Kirchner, Richard Klos, Ray Kowe, Anne Kontula, Petri Kupiainen, Anne-Maj Lahdenperä, Natalie S. Lord, Dan J. Lunt, J.-O. NäslundM. Nordén, S. Norris, D. Pérez-Sánchez, A. Proverbio, K. Riekki, A. Rübel, Lieve Sweeck, R. Walke, S. Xu, G. Smith, G. Pröhl

    Research outputpeer-review

    Abstract

    The International Atomic Energy Agency has coordinated an international project addressing climate change and landscape development in post-closure safety assessments of solid radioactive waste disposal. The work has been supported by results of parallel on-going research that has been published in a variety of reports and peer reviewed journal articles. The project is due to be described in detail in a forthcoming IAEA report. Noting the multi-disciplinary nature of post-closure safety assessments, here, an overview of the work is given to provide researchers in the broader fields of radioecology and radiological safety assessment with a review of the work that has been undertaken. It is hoped that such dissemination will support and promote integrated understanding and coherent treatment of climate change and landscape development within an overall assessment process. The key activities undertaken in the project were: identification of the key processes that drive environmental change (mainly those associated with climate and climate change), and description of how a relevant future may develop on a global scale; development of a methodology for characterising environmental change that is valid on a global scale, showing how modelled global changes in climate can be downscaled to provide information that may be needed for characterising environmental change in site-specific assessments, and illustrating different aspects of the methodology in a number of case studies that show the evolution of site characteristics and the implications for the dose assessment models.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)41-53
    Number of pages13
    JournalJournal of environmental radioactivity
    Volume183
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 1 Mar 2018

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