Thinking outside the cage

摘要

A concrete backfill with a water barrier has been developed to stabilise legacy waste packages stored in the 1960s-70s at the Richard radioactive waste repository in a former Czech limestone mine. The barrier, a so-called hydraulic cage, provides an alternative pathway for groundwater to prevent the build up of a pressure gradient across the concreted waste body, and can be used even in saturated rock. The desiqn could be applied to other waste repositories worldwide.