NUMO R&D Forum at January 17 2008

The NUMO R&D Forum, which reported the technological development, was held in the Tokyo international exchange pavilion on Thursday, January 17, 2008, and the participants had exceeded 300.

At first, Dr. Charles McCombie (president of the Arius Co.) made the keynote speech on “The Japanese geological disposal programme in an international context”.

In the oral session, the result of technological development concerning the investigative technique, the evaluation technique of the geological environment, the disposal technology, the performance assessment technique, and repository safety and the confidence building strategy etc. were reported by NUMO (The chairperson: Prof.Ohe of Tokai University), and we had the active questions from the participant.

The participants and NUMO also exchanged both opinions as for the poster session in the lobby.

At the end, Dr. Charles McCombie (chairperson), Mr. Thomas Isaacs (Director of Planning and Special Studies for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Dr. Margaret Chu (former Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management at the Department of Energy), Prof. Linda Warren (Emeritus Professor of Environmental Law at Aberystwyth University), Prof. Ohe, and Kitayama (a senior technical advisor of NUMO) presented the panel discussion regarding the following theme.

1. R&D and its contribution to public communication and confidence building
2. The need for building and sustaining adequate human resources

Agenda: NUMO R&D Forum