The RELABEN project has published its first deliverable, an announcement dated 9 January 2026 on the IGD-TP website. The deliverable has two parts: a State of the Art report on bentonite rheological behaviour and a detailed research plan.
The report is based on the updated State of the Art from the earlier HITEC project, together with a further review of the literature and of experiments performed since HITEC ended. The research plan was built on the knowledge gaps identified in that review. The two parts correspond to Deliverable 1, an initial review of bentonite rheological behaviour, and Deliverable 2, the detailed research plan.
The work sits under IGD-TP's Key Topic 3, which covers the technical feasibility and long-term performance of repository technology and construction. IGD-TP members taking part in the activity include SÚRAO of Czechia, Sweden's SKB, Canada's NWMO, Finland's Posiva and the UK's Nuclear Waste Services.
The deliverable gives the international community a shared technical baseline for bentonite behaviour, a key component of geological disposal safety cases.
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