Technical note 1. Review of the Geomicrobiological Aspects of SKB's Licence Application for a Spent Nuclear Fuel Repository in Forsmark, Sweden

The report reviews whether the research work by SKB has been adequately comprehensive to describe the influence of microbial activity for sulphide production at repository depth. The report also documents any uncertainties with regard to predictions of rates and consequences of microbial sulphide production. SKB's assessment relies almost entirely on the results of the research that they commissioned from the Univ. of Goeteborg (Pedersen, 2010, Masurat et al., 2010a, b). This is not an unreasonable position, as there is no directly comparable research available. However, there is considerable literature demonstrating continued activity of sulphate-reducing bacteria over geological time scales and enhanced activity of sulphate-reducing bacteria in interaction with metals and corrosion, that should also be taken into consideration when assessing potential microbially influenced corrosion (Beech and Sunner, 2007) of the copper canister.