The Task Group has been launched during the Workshop "Mobility in Biosphere of Iodine, Technetium, Selenium and Uranium" co-organized by IUR and ANDRA in Nancy (France), April 2002. The participants gathered around a consensus on the high priority for radioecology to tackle the problem of the management of high level radioactive waste.
The objective of this Task Gorce is to promote the cooperation between radioecologists working in the field of radioactive waste management. The group agreed to conduct workshops focused on the behaviour or key radionuclides for radioactive waste management as the main working form. At the moment the group has 30 members.
The first workshop of the “Radioecology and Waste” Task Group was held in Merlewood, U.K, between the 27th and the 28th of February, 2003. Nineteen scientists attended the workshop, which was organised by Brenda Howard, Rodolfo Avila and Elisabeth Leclerc-Cessac. The workshop was focused on three key radionuclides in radioactive waste management: 237Np, 14C and 36Cl. A half-day session was dedicated to each radionuclide, each of which started with a general review presented by Elis Holm for 237Np, Mike Thorne for 14C and Valery Kashparov for 36Cl. Presentations were also made by Kath Morris (237Np), Dan Galeriu, Nick Ostle, Christian Tamponnet and Linda Kumblad (14C) and Daniel Ashworth (36Cl). Each session concluded with a discussion about the long-term transfer of these radionuclides in terrestrial and aquatic environments.
The second workshop of the Task Group has been held in Madrid, 3-4 November 2003, at the CIEMAT premises in Madrid. The workshop has been particularly dedicated to the environmental behaviour of Uranium and Technetium.
Previsional work for 2004 is planned to be focused on systematising the results obtained in the two previous workshops carried out in 2003. A new workshop will be held, possibly during the ECORAD 2004 Conference in Aix-en-Provence, France, in early September 2004. An IUR report covering issues discussed during these workshops will be prepared. This report will include recommendations of further research needed to improve predictions of the radionuclide transfer in the environment in connection with safety assessments of repositories for high level radioactive waste.
A final Workshop is currently foreseen to be held at SCK-CEN Mol, Belgium, by mid-October 2006, to finalise the report.
(Last update: 17 May 2006)