International Benchmark Trip Confirms Tellus Safety Case Best Practice

“We met with 12 storage organisations, visited 14 sites, spoke with many international experts in surface and underground repository design and operation and held a number of business development discussions,” Tellus Technical Services Manage Steve Reece said.

“The tour covered a wide-ranging programme and took in a variety of mining methods, waste management techniques and surface and underground facilities in a number of different geological environments,” he said.

“Tellus’ current approach to safety case development is consistent with the observed European safety case models and represents a ‘world’s best practice’ approach,” he said.

Before joining Tellus, Steve Reece developed and operated the UK’s first underground salt mine hazardous waste disposal facility.

During the tour, he presented to 120 international experts at the DOPAS (Demonstration of Plugs and Seals) seminar in Finland. The seminar discussed recent research and reported on a number of full-scale experiments examining European repository sealing techniques.

“Seals are an essential part of the multi-barrier containment approach to provide permanent isolation of emplaced wastes and are a cornerstone of the long-term safety case for geological repositories,” he said.

Steve’s presentation attracted a lot of interest, as Australia is viewed as having significant mining expertise, Europe has major storage expertise and Tellus is seeking to select the best solutions from both regions.

“No fundamental challenges to our Sandy Ridge design were identified,” Tellus’ Sandy Ridge Project Manager Mike Ingram said.

“The shaft and tunnel sealing methodologies witnessed in Germany – where about 20 salt mines are used for waste backfill operations – are considered world’s best practice. We confirmed that these methodologies are consistent with our current designs for Chandler,” Tellus’ Chandler Project Manager Stephen Hosking said.

“The use of bulk waste delivery systems inspected could also provide significant efficiencies to further improve our already robust project economics,” he said.