Nuclear Waste Management Services

Two business units of Mitta, Clay Technology in Sweden and Mitta Engineering in Finland, provide expert consulting, engineering, laboratory and scientific modelling services to nuclear waste management organizations since 1988. Our services include disposal program management, facility conceptual design, construction and operations planning, performance assessments, long-term safety assessments and safety case compilation. The bentonite clay barriers planned to be used in deep geological disposal are a particular strength of ours.

Over the years we have worked with several nuclear waste management organisations, counting over 25 facilities in 20 countries. Our deepest expertise is on high level waste (HLW) facilities, especially in Sweden and Finland. However, we have also worked with numerous low- and intermediate level waste (LILW) facilities.

Our consulting services have been forged in the depths of the Swedish and Finnish spent nuclear fuel repository programs over the course of 30+ years. Today we are assisting our advanced repository programs in operations planning and data management, optimization of repository solutions, as well as the remaining touches on the safety case for licensing. Internationally we offer deep experience also in the much earlier stages of disposal programs, including conceptual design, costing, socio-economic stakeholder approaches.

Our laboratories in both Finland and Sweden have wide capacity to test clays and soils at various scales. The laboratories are well equipped to test the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties as well as to analyse thermal, hydraulic and mechanical properties, with a particular focus on swelling clays, such as bentonite. The capacity is applied to solve client’s needs by our experts, who have decades of experience and deep understanding of these materials from the Ångström to the meters scale.

Both companies also provide modelling services for clay materials and barriers in nuclear waste repositories. Numerical models are used to analyse laboratory experiments, and experiments to calibrate models. The models allow to predict the behaviour of both the rock mass and bentonite barriers in nuclear waste repositories up to timescales of thousands of years. We use state of the art tools, such as FLAC2D, 3DEC, CODE_BRIGHT and COMSOL Multiphysics.

Our expertise is not limited only to nuclear waste management organizations but we also provide laboratory services for bentonite producers, resellers and users, geotechnical soil and concrete testing for the construction industry, analyses of concrete condition and harmful substances for the renovation engineering, and engineering consulting services for the mining sector.

Our offices and laboratories are located in IDEON Science Park in Lund, Sweden, and in Vantaa and in Helsinki in Finland.

Both Mitta Engineering Oy and Clay Technology AB have ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications.

Learn more about Clay Technology

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