News overview

The ZDF report TerraX with Harald Lesch, which was partly shot at the Mont Terri rock laboratory, is now available online. Although the focus is on the German situation, part of the report concentrates on the Swiss example of waste disposal and the choice of Opalinus Clay as the host rock for the storage of radioactive waste.

The Technical Meeting was held on 7 and 8 May in Porrentruy - in the magnificent former Jesuit church - and St-Ursanne. More than 120 participants from the 22 international partners in the Mont Terri Project presented the state of research into the storage of radioactive waste and CO2, for which opalinus clay plays an essential role.

The halls of the former lime kilns in St-Ursanne are to become a storage facility for drill core samples of national geological interest. This new core library will be operated by swisstopo, which is already present on the site as part of the Mont Terri Project. Renovation work is currently underway, and once this is completed a high-bay storage system on pallets will be installed. The stored geological cores will then be available for research.

The first CIGSS - Caprock Integrity & Gas Storage Symposium - was held on 24 & 25 January at the Mont Terri rock laboratory visitor centre. With around hundred participants and top-quality speakers, this first edition was a great success. Representatives from academia, government agencies and industry met to discuss the current state of knowledge on CO₂ storage and caprock in particular. This success underlines the growing and unique importance of the Mont Terri rock laboratory as an international platform for research and exchange on radioactive waste and CO₂.