Meuse/Haute-Marne centre: next steps towards a deep disposal facility

This paper presents the main results obtained during a decade of scientific activities in the Meuse/Haute-Marne Underground Research Laboratory (URL) located on the eastern boundary of the Paris Basin, in the Callovo-Oxfordian clay rock formation. The URL was built in the framework of ANDRA's research program into the feasibility of a reversible deep geological disposal of high-level and intermediate-level long-lived radioactive (HL, ILLL) waste. Its underground drifts have been used to study a 160-million-year old clay layer. The 2006 Planning Act adopted this disposal concept as the reference solution for the long-term management of HL and ILLL radioactive waste. Today, research is continuing into the design and sitting of the disposal facility which could be commissioned by 2025 if its license is granted in 2016. Through these programs, the laboratory will help ANDRA develop a concrete approach with a view to proposing suitable architectures and management methods for a deep disposal facility, to allow by 2016 the decision for the start of the construction of the shafts and drifts of the new disposal facility.