Research in the Mont Terri rock laboratory: quo vadis?

During the past ten years, the 12 Mont Terri partner organisations Andra, BGR, CRIEPI, ENRESA, FOWG, GRS, HSK, IRSN, INC, NAGRA, OBAYASHI and SCK-CEN have jointly carried out and financed a research programme in the Mont Terri Rock Laboratory (38 completed and 31 ongoing experiments). An important strategic question for the Mont Terri project is what type of new experiments should be carried out in the future. This question has been discussed among partner delegates, authorities, scientists, principal investigators and experiment delegates. All experiments at Mont Terri - past, ongoing and future - can be assigned to the following three categories: 1) process and mechanism understanding in undisturbed argillaceous formations, 2) experiments related to repository-induced perturbations and 3) experiments related to repository performance during the operational and post-closure phases. In each of these three areas, there are still open questions and hence potential experiments to be carried out in the future. A selection of key issues and questions which have not, or have only partly, been addressed so far and in which the project partners, but also the safety authorities and other research organisations may be interested, are presented below. (authors)