LOT—in situ diffusion experiments using radioactive tracers

An experiment series at Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory, called “Long Term Test of Buffer Material”, LOT, are carried out at Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory to validate models of clay buffer performance at standard KBS-3 repository conditions and to quantify clay buffer alteration processes at adverse conditions. In conjunction with the tests of the bentonite , cation diffusion tests using caesium and cobalt are performed. Each test contains 38 cylindrical blocks of bentonite clay with a hole in the middle which are placed around a copper rod in a vertically drilled hole at a depth of 450 m. In each test, four identical cylindrical bentonite plugs, doped with 1 MBq ⁵⁷Co and ¹³⁴ Cs, respectively, are inserted in the fifth block from the bottom. The system was left to be saturated with ground water before heating of the central copper rod started to simulate the thermal activity of radioactive waste. The experiments continued for 14 months before the bentonite blocks were drilled out using over-core drilling technique. The lowest blocks were cut up, sparsely in the outer layer, and in cubic centimeters, big samples closer to where the activity was inserted. All samples were analyzed using a gamma spectrometer to get a three-dimensional picture of the activity distribution. The system was then fitted to a diffusion model to obtain apparent diffusivities for the two cations. The apparent diffusivity for cobalt agrees well with those obtained in other in situ experiments and in laboratory studies, while the value for caesium is lower than expected. This can be due to that the clay was not fully water saturated during the experiment.