Monitoring of ground water | France

Nuclear waste 500m underground

In 1979, a national agency (ANDRA) was established in France for managing itsnuclear wastes. In 2000, ANDRA started building at Bure (Haute-Marne/ Meuse) a500m deep underground laboratory for scientific experiments regarding longterms radioactive waste storage. Stability of the underground geology is a keycomponent of the research program. More than one hundred galleries havebeen dug, from -445 to -490 m, to undertake the multiple experiments rangingfrom hydrological, geotechnical, thermal and geochemistry.Since 2001, SIXENSE has been in charge of the design, installation andmaintenance of a comprehensive remote monitoring network to support theexperiments.

A detailed network of wells

As part of this ambitious project, a detailed network of wells has beenimplemented to carry out an extensive ground water monitoring regime and asampling program around the laboratory.Automatic sensors connected to dataloggers are recording water temperatureand pressure. Water samples are also taken on a regular basis for analysis.SIXENSE implemented its data management platform. This powerful systemallow for scientists from ANDRA and their partners either in France or abroad toget access to real-time data, wherever and whenever they need it.The system also allows for storage and archiving of all the historical data, aswell as triggered alarms, procedures and attached documents.The results of these experiments will enable a comprehensive model of theunderground water to be determined. This will be used to specify the design andregulations for the construction and operations of the long term nuclear wastesdepository due to enter into service around 2025.