Performance of clay barriers in repositories for radioactive waste
© 2012 EPFL
Assessing the performance of deep geological repositories for heat-generating radioactive waste requires reliable numerical predictions of the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of the clay barriers.
The barriers represent an important element of the nuclear waste isolation system. Given the complexity of the involved phenomena, understanding the constitutive behaviour of clays and modeling their evolution is challenging. In the context of a European Euratom Research Program, our group identified the fundamental behaviours of clay materials and proposed a deterministic model that is able to handle the main involved physical mechanisms in a comprehensive theoretical framework. This model is now applied to solve various engineering problems in the field of nuclear waste storage.
B. François L. Laloui C. Laurent
THM simulation of ATLAS in-situ large scale test in Boom Clay, Computer and Geotechnics, vol 36, p 626-640, 2008.