Humic substances in performance assessment of nuclear waste disposal: Actinide and iodine migration in the far-field. Third technical progress report

The present report describes progress within the third and final year of the EC-project 'Humic Substances in Performance Assessment of Nuclear Waste Disposal: Actinide and Iodine Migration in the Far-Field'. The work conducted within the present project builds on a number of previous activities/project supported by the Commission. It finds its continuation within different EC FP 6 instruments and also provides for additional continued cooperation through network structures resulting from the broad cooperation within the project. Without being a formal requirement of the Commission or co-funding bodies, this report documents results in great technical detail and makes the results available to a broad scientific community. The report contains an executive summary written by the coordinator. More detailed results are given as individual contributions in the form of 12 annexes. Not all results are discussed or referred to in the executive summary report and thus readers with a deeper interest also need to consult the annexes. The overall objectives were to generate knowledge about the impact of humic substances on the migration of actinides and iodine in the far-field of a nuclear waste repository. In the beginning, focus was rather on the potential enhancement due to humic colloid mediated radionuclide transport. Thereby, sources, inventory, stability and mobility of dissolved humic substances in their colloidal form formed a key topic. Other key topics were the interaction with actinides and iodine, transport studies under near-natural conditions in the laboratory, rationalization of knowledge in models and application to three migration cases for visualization of the overall outcome. Changes relative to the original objectives were given by moving emphasis of natural chemical analogue studies from the question of kinetic exchange constants for different inventories in natural and laboratory systems to the study of anthropogenic actinide contaminants in the Irish Sea. Furthermore, by the involvement of a Marie-Curie grantee, the question of additional sources from the high alkaline natural clay near-field was brought into the project. (orig.)