Institute of Resource Ecology. Annual report 2017

The Institute of Resource Ecology (IRE) is one of the eight institutes of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The research activities are mainly integrated into the program ''Nuclear Waste Management, Safety and Radiation Research (NUSAFE)'' of the Helmholtz Association (HGF) and focused on the topics ''Safety of Nuclear Waste Disposal'' and ''Reactor Safety''. Additionally, further activities investigate chemical and environmental aspects of processing and recycling of strategic metals, namely rare earth elements. These activities are located in the HGF program ''Energy Efficiency, Materials and Resources (EMR)''. Both programs, and therefore all work which is done at IRE, belong to the research field ''Energy'' of the HGF. The research objectives are the protection of humans and the environment from hazards caused by pollutants resulting from technical processes that produce energy and raw materials. Treating technology and ecology as a unity is the major scientific challenge in assuring the safety of technical processes and gaining their public acceptance. We investigate the ecological risks exerted by radioactive and non-radioactive metals in the context of nuclear waste disposal, the production of energy in nuclear power plants and in processes along the value chain of metalliferous raw materials. A common goal is to generate better understanding of the essential processes controlling metal mobilization and immobilization at the molecular level by using advanced spectroscopic methods. This in turn enables us to improve models, codes and data for predictive calculations, extending the assessment of the transport and distribution of these contaminants in the environment to a macroscopic scale.