Geological Disposal Facilities

Expertise in the characterisations of host rocks for Geological Disposal Facilities

consultancy@petriva.co.uk

With our extensive experience in the evaluation of top seals and fault seal, Petriva is well placed to assess sedimentary host rocks for deep nuclear waste repositories, Indeed Petriva's CEO, Prof. Quentin Fisher is currently a GeoAdvisor for NAGRA, the Swiss Nuclear Wastes disposal organisation.

Petriva, alongside the University of Leeds, are currently developing workflows to establish key index properties from mudstone intervals which could be suitable for hosting a Geological Disposal Facility. Using legacy data from the oil & gas industry, core, cuttings and wireline logs are being used to characterise thick mudstone successions. Outcrops, where available, also form part of the analysis.

• Core and cuttings analysis
  • Including analysis conducted at subsurface stress conditions
• Petrophysical analysis
• QXRD analysis to determine mineralgy (bulk and clay fraction), including orientated clay mounts to better determine clay mineralogy.
• Analysis of microstructure using BSEM (lithology, mineralogy, diagenetic history)
• Nano-indentation techniques to determine geomechanical properties of core/cuttings, specifically Young's Modulus and hardness.
• Data integration and  visualisation using our bespoke PETMiner software

A number of JIP project proposals are also live or awaiting sponsors. All of these have relevance to geological disposal both for nuclear waste as well as CCS, gas and hydrogen storage follow the links for more information.