STOCKHOLM, Feb. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- What impact would an ice sheet have on a Swedish final repository for spent nuclear fuel? And how does a final repository affect the surroundings if the ground is constantly frozen? The answers to these questions can be found in Greenland.
http://www.multivu.com/mnr/58701-swedish-nuclear-fuel-waste-management-SKB
In Kangerlussuaq, in western Greenland, Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, SKB, is participating in a major international research project that investigates how glacial meltwater flows through and under the ice sheet and forms groundwater that, in turn, would be able to affect the safety of the repository. The project is called the Greenland Analogue Project, GAP for short.
SKB is also studying what happens at the ground surface in a permafrost landscape. How does the water at the surface flow in a landscape where the ground is constantly frozen? And how does the biosphere work, where all life is? These are questions for the GRASP Project: Greenland Analogue Surface Project.
The nuclear fuel repository has to function and be safe for very long periods of time. SKB’s safety analyses investigate what will happen to the repository during as long a period of time as one million years. That’s the equivalent of as much as eight ice age cycles. By examining existing ice sheets, like the one in Greenland, climatologists can learn enough to be able to model what could occur in the far future.
In these three short films about SKB’s on-going research you can meet some of SKB’s researchers, learn more about both climate research in general and the GAP and GRASP projects.
Press Relations Manager Jimmy Larsson-Hagberg, +46 8 459 84 83, jimmy.larsson-hagberg@skb.se
