Dear Ms Klein Ben David

I am happy to receive your nomination to participate in the virtual technical meeting of the URF Network for geological disposal. I still remember well the presentation on near-surface disposal provided by your colleague in 2017 when the URF Network met in Finland; and I regret you could not join the meeting in 2019 in China – which may have been a wise decision at the time given that we ended up having a somewhat tyring travel to reach the desert site for the future URF in China.

For this years’ virtual meeting, please find attached a draft agenda – specific links for the online meeting will be forwarded at a later stage, after we have received all nominations.

Please also find below a brief introduction to some of the expected meeting contributions.

Specific to the national disposal program you represent from Israel, I am not aware of an active program on generic studies, or considerations for any siting plans, for a deep geological disposal. I would certainly be happy to hear from you if there are any such plans or research activities – if at all possible via a brief email in the next few days. In which case, it might be interesting for the network to hear about these in a brief, one or two slide information (we could discuss details on this later).

As I realize that some fraction of the radioactive waste inventory under the responsibility of Israel may require disposal in a deeper geological formation, I hope the broad information presented and discussed by Member States during this meeting might provide you with a good overview of possible approaches.

Depending on the specific disposal interests and needs for the program in Israel, I could in addition try to place you in contact with a few national programs that do not operate nuclear power plants, and that are currently exploring options for disposal of some of their waste inventory from research reactors and similar, in a smaller geological disposal facility.

Finally, and in case you are not already aware of this: we are currently managing a coordinated research project focused on the options of borehole disposal for different types of inventories, for which results may be available in a year or so.

Happy to hear from you

Kind regards

Stefan

Mr Stefan Mayer

Team Leader

Section of Waste Technology | Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

Department of Nuclear Energy

International Atomic Energy Agency | Vienna International Centre, PO Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria |

s.j.mayer@iaea.org | T: (+43-1) 2600-22672 | F: (+43-1) 26007 |

Underground Research Facilities Network for Geological Disposal Public site

ATOMS FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT

And also @IAEANE & iaea.org/ne

From: MAYER, Stefan Joerg
Sent: Monday, 08 February 2021 18:41
To: LANGE, Karina <K.Lange@iaea.org>; MAYER, Stefan Joerg <S.J.Mayer@iaea.org>
Subject: Draft Agenda for URF Network meeting Feb 22 - March 4

Dear colleagues of the URF network

Before I share draft information with you, one important DISCLAIMER:

We have not yet received all nominations to the URF network meeting, therefore I send out this draft information to my list of network member contacts for further dispatching.

I kindly ask you:

(i) to ignore if you have already decided not to join this meeting this year; and otherwise

(ii) to share and forward to any of your already nominated national program colleagues (for which I may not yet have received nomination information).

Now to content…

Please find attached the draft agenda. Invitations with a link to the virtual meeting will follow, once we have received all nominations.

The schedule is tight, and the time differences we have to contend with are significant (candidates for the most significant differences reside in New Mexico and in Japan) – so in advance, please accept my apologies for imposing such schedules; my hope is that the meeting content will make up for it.

We will expect prior meeting contributions from many, but not all of you.

These contributions include:

(i) a brief update for recent progress and main recent events or lessons learnt in the national DGR program – all for Monday or Tuesday;

(ii) a focused brief update on RD&D progress/results obtained in the URF, as well as plans and opportunities for cooperation (Thursday);

(iii) feedback of Core groups cooperating on our main document projects (week 2).

On global DGR program update:

Detailed specifications on content will follow and content cannot exceed 10 minutes of a pre-recorded presentation (Tuesday).

All programs not having a significant update (on siting, on scientific/technical basis, etc…) will be asked to provide a short synthesis (scale of the inventory; plans and tentative schedule for siting; future needs to progress, etc…) that will be collated by the scientific secretary into a brief overview presentation on “emerging/future” programs (Monday).

On URF RD&D update:

Based on number of contributions that will be expected (ACTION: Please inform us if you can contribute an update), each URF update can likely not last more than 10 minutes.

On contributions to the main document sessions scheduled during week 2: Further emails will follow, to prepare the dedicated sessions during week 2 of this virtual meeting.