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.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) Natural Analogue Catalogue update and NA Strategy report have been added to the NAWG Library. They can be downloaded under NA Overviews.

Or, just click the report images!

The 2024 workshop (18-19th September) took place successfully at the University of Hokkaido, providing a good overview of the application of NAs in repository safety cases. In addition, group discussions were held on how to improve the use of NA studies in future safety case development in Japan and on their application in stakeholder communications.

Further information on the outcome of the workshop will be provided by NUMO at a later date.

Natural Analogue Workshop (Japan) 2024 venue, University of Hokkaido, Japan

NAWG-17 Workshop Proceedings published

The 17th NAWG workshop was organized by the Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering, University of Zagreb, and the Natural Analogues Working Group (NAWG), 8-11 May 2023 in Zadar.

On the link NAWG-17 you can download proceedings of the workshop located at http://www.rgn.unizg.hr website. Proceedings prepared & published by:

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum
Engineering
Pierottijeva 6, p.p. 390
10000 Zagreb
The Republic of Croatia
www.rgn.unizg.hr 

See also presentation here online at NAWG website.

NAWG-15 Workshop Proceedings published

NAWG-15 Proceedings have been published as an Bedrock Geosciences Technical Report at natural-analogues.com website. You can download yours here.

The 15th NAWG Workshop was held from Tuesday, 23rd to Thursday, 25th May, 2017 at the ÚJV laboratory, Řež, Prague in the Czech Republic.

On Friday 26th May there was a Field trip to SÚRAO’s Bukov URL in the former Rozna uranium mine.

The workshop was held with the kind support of  ÚJV Řež, a.s. and SÚRAO

Presentations from NAWG-17 workshop held in Zadar, Croatia, have been uploaded at NAWG website. Have a look here.

Tony Milodowski and his co-authors have described the salinity and redox evolution in a deep coastal groundwater system. The results indicate long-term stability in a deep hydrochemical system despite repeated glaciations and associated sea level changes throughout the Quaternary.

The document can be found in our document library, or downloaded directly pdf here (3.86 MB) . pdf
(3.86 MB)

Posiva, Finland, have recently released a new assessment of the potential impact of alkali, cementitious leachates from their L/ILW repository on their SF repository. The new study, Posiva Working Report 2017-03 (which can be downloaded here), builds on information from several NA studies, including work in Jordan (Maqarin) and Northern Ireland (Scawt Hill). See also Posiva Working Report 2007-35 (here) and SKB Report 12-17 (here).

In 2015, Springer Journals asked the Editors-in-Chiefs of their journals to pick one article they published in 2015 that addressed the world's most pressing challenges ....