SKI is preparing to review the license applications being developed by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) for a final repository for the geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SFL-2) in the year 2009. As part of its preparation, SKI is conducting a series of technical workshops on key aspects of the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) and spent fuel. This workshop concerns the assessment of the spent fuel performance and near-field radionuclide retardation mechanisms in the engineered barriers. This will provide a basis for the review of SKB’s source term modelling in future safety assessment work. Previous workshops have addressed the overall concept for long-term integrity of the EBS (SKI report 2003:29), the manufacturing, testing and QA of the EBS (SKI report 2004:26), the performance confirmation for the EBS (SKI report 2004:49), long-term stability of the buffer and the backfill (SKI report 2005:48) and corrosion properties of copper canisters (SKI Report 2006:11).
The goal of ongoing review work in connection of the workshop series is to achieve a comprehensive overview of all aspects of SKB’s EBS and spent fuel work prior to the handling of the forthcoming license application. This report aims to summarise the issues discussed at the spent fuel and source term modelling workshop and to extract the essential viewpoints that have been expressed. The report is not a comprehensive record of all the discussions at the workshop and individual statements made by workshop participants should be regarded as opinions rather than proven facts. Results from the EBS workshops series will be used as one important basis in future review work.