Attendance of the general update workshop of the IGD-TP project on Post-Closure Criticality Safety (PCCS).

This mobility action consisted of the travel of the applicant to participate in the IGD-TP’s Post Closure Criticality Safety (PCCS) project workshop in September 2022. The PCCS project bring together Waste Management Organisations (WMOs) and supporting organisations from across Europe and North America with the primary goals of enabling the sharing and discussion of technical knowledge and results, fostering a mutual understanding of post closure criticality safety, and identifying areas for further collaboration and engagement.
The September 2022 PCCS workshop in Baden, Switzerland was the second official project workshop and the first to be held in-person. The workshop was focused primarily on issues concerning the criticality safety of spent fuel disposal in the post closure phase of the repository. Topics included the application of fuel burn-up, the adopted criticality safety criterion, degradation scenarios and timescales, validation, criticality consequences assessments and communication with stakeholders. Representatives were present from the respective WMOs of Belgium, Spain, Hungry, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the UK, Switzerland, the USA and Canada, plus supporting researchers. The workshop included a visit to the Grimsel underground rock laboratory.
The three-day workshop enabled participants to identify key potential areas for collaboration as well as to learn from each other and provide a level of peer review for existing work. The applicant was able to participate in all of the workshop sessions which were helpful for his professional development and for ensuring that his own work remains in-step with the generally agreed best-practice in the field. It also enabled the applicant to network with other practitioners and to develop a holistic understanding of the outstanding challenges in the field.