Technical visit (Option 1)

ANDRA'S UNDERGROUND RESEARCH LABORATORY (URL): A UNIQUE SCIENTIFIC TOOL

 Aerial view of the URL surface facilities (Andra picture)

Andra is the French National Agency for Nuclear Waste Management.

Andra's major research facility is the LSMHM (Laboratoire Souterrain de Meuse / Haute-Marne) Underground Research Laboratory (URL). It is located at about 1 hour driving to the West of Nancy.

This facility, with several galleries at 500 m depth, aims at studying the feasibility of the reversible geological disposal of "high-level" and "long-lived intermediate-level" radioactive waste in the Callovo-Oxfordian clay formation. This formation is intensively studied, especially concerning its thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour.

Several stress measurement campaigns were performed around the URL: overcoring, undercoring, hydraulic fracking.

For more information, please have a look at Andra's web page here.

PRACTICAL DETAILS FOR THE TECHNICAL VISIT

The technical visit is entrance-free, but registration is mandatory, within the limit of available places.

It will take place on Thursday November, 22^nd 2018, with a departure at 12:30 from "Mines Nancy" by bus and a return in the evening (at about 19:00).

Scientific drift (Andra picture)