Welcome to the Natural Analogues Working Group website

Postponed: further information will be provided shortly

NAWG-18 venue, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, UK

Image courtesy Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester

NAWG (Natural Analogue Working Group, chair Dr Russell Alexander), in association with Prof Kevin Taylor (University of Manchester, UK) and Prof Simon Norris (Nuclear Waste Services and University of Manchester, UK), is pleased to announce that the 18th NAWG workshop will be held in Manchester, UK, on 10-13th June, 2025.

The NAWG-18 workshop will be an opportunity to explore recent developments in the use of natural analogues (NA) in supporting safety cases (SC) for the disposal of radioactive wastes. Argumentation by use of analogy is well established in many fields including philosophy, biology, linguistics and law and most scientists are familiar with this approach and will have used it at some point in their career. If you are keen to learn more about how we employ this approach in radioactive waste disposal, why not come along?

Currently, the programme is:

Monday, 9th June

Travel to Manchester, meet your fellow participants (and any accompanying family or friends) in the evening for an icebreaker at the conference hotel, beginning at 19:00. If you are not staying in the hotel, please reserve a place with Russell.

Tuesday, 10th June

Session I: NA studies in support of repository siting

• Session Ia: direct NA technical input to site characterisation
• Session Ib: using NAs to communicate with local communities

Session II: NA in stakeholder communications

• what has been achieved so far?
• previous mistakes made through over-simplification of the messages
• where to now – examples of current thinking, how to learn from science on other media?

Session III: Poster session

Wednesday, 11th June

Session IV: NA in the SC

• Session IVa: recent examples of NA support of the SC
• Session IVb: what should NA bring to the SC – the view of the regulator
• Session IVc: use of NA information in licence applications

Workshop dinner will be at the Gusto Italian restaurant in the city centre from 19:30. If you are not staying in the hotel, please reserve a place with Russell.

Thursday, 12th June

Session V: longevity of the engineered barrier systems (EBS)

• Session Va: waste forms
• Session Vb: waste packages
• Session Vc: buffers, backfills and seals

Session VI: host rock studies

• Session VIa: external processes (climate, biosphere, seismicity etc.) potentially affecting safety
• Session VIb: radionuclide migration in the geosphere
• Session VIc: impact of potential EBS-host rock interaction

Friday, 13th June

Session VII: Field excursion: full information will be provided shortly when details are finalised, but a full day excursion to two natural analogue sites is envisaged

These are but a few examples of what we plan to discuss, but we are open to any suggestions to broaden the scope of the meeting - please drop the NAWG chairman, Russell Alexander (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), a line with your comments and ideas.

To express interest in attending the workshop and to reserve one of the limited number of rooms in the workshop hotel, please submit a registration form (here) by Friday, 25th April 2025). Alternatively, to simply join the workshop on a session-by-session basis, please contact Russell before Friday, 9th May 2025.

Deadline for submission of abstracts (see here for template) is 23rd May 2025 (to be made openly available on the NAWG-18 workshop page of the NAWG web site). Please note that as the entire point of the workshop is to communicate with a wider audience, pdf copies of all presentations will also be made openly available on the NAWG-18 web page immediately after the conclusion of the workshop. Deadline for full papers in a workshop proceedings special issue (open journal Special Publication) is 30th June 2025, full details will be provided at a later date.