Abstract
A special procedure for final disposal of liquid radioactive waste (LLW, ILW, HLW) — injection into deep geological formations — was developed in the former USSR and employed since 1963.
This procedure was practiced at the sites of the Research Institute for Reactor Engineering Dimitrovgrad and at radiochemical facilities in Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26.
The deposits (layers of sand, limestone) lie at depths below 200 m and are isolated from other ground water horizons and the surface by overlying layers with low permeability.
At the Krasnoyarsk site a total of approx. 5 × 106 m3 of low- to high-level waste were disposed at depths of 180–280 m and 350–500 m; at the Tomsk site a total of approx. 3.7×107 m3 of liquid radwaste were disposed at depths of 180–280 m and 270–320 m.
The EU-project for assessing the final disposal safety of the Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk sites resulted in the improvement of a database, the development of a generic assessment model for the injection sites, a site-specific model for the repositories, the assessment of the performance of the repositories and finally recommendations to safety authorities.