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New Chairman, Jens Birkholzer and Berkeley Lab to Coordinate DECOVALEX Activities1 min read

by Maryann Villavert on February 29, 2016

Energy Geosciences Division Hydrogeology Department Nuclear Energy & Waste Program

Heater Test Facility at Yucca Mountain (1997)

Heater Test Facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, location of a potential nuclear waste geologic repository (1997). This heater test was one of many DECOVALEX modeling test cases in past project phases.


birkholzer-jens-portraitEnergy Geosciences Division Director Jens Birkholzer was recently named the Chairman of the DECOVALEX Project, which is an international research and model comparison collaboration, consisting of a number of nuclear waste management organizations and regulatory authorities with several contributing research teams.

DECOVALEX which stands for DEvelopment of COupled models and their VALidation against EXperiments, has played a key role for over 20 years in the development of coupled thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM), and thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (THMC), models of geosystems and their applications to deep geological disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Starting in the Spring of 2016, Berkeley Lab will serve as the coordinating organization for the upcoming DECOVALEX project phase, which will run through 2019. There will be new and exciting modeling test cases that will support ongoing development of numerical THM and THMC simulators and comparison of model results with field and laboratory data. The scope of DECOVALEX also includes developing an understanding performance and safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories, and designing new experiments to support code and modeling developments.

For more info about DECOVALEX project, publications and the impact it has made over the past 20+ years, go to: http://www.decovalex.org/

News & Events

EESA Scientists Investigate How Tropical Soil Microbes Might Respond to Future Droughts2 min read

March 14, 2023

As the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems on Earth, tropical rainforests are just as critical to sustaining environmental and human systems as they are beautiful. Their unique climate with high temperatures, humidity, and precipitation promotes high primary productivity, which offsets high respiration, resulting in these ecosystems being one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth,…

Doubling Protected Lands for Biodiversity Could Require Tradeoffs With Other Land Uses, Study Finds4 min read

March 3, 2023

This article first appeared on lbl.gov. Scientists show how 30% protected land targets may not safeguard biodiversity hotspots and may negatively affect other sectors – and how data and analysis can support effective conservation and land use planning Although more than half the world’s countries have committed to protecting at least 30% of land and oceans…

Six Berkeley Lab Scientists Named AAAS Fellows6 min read

This article first appeared at lbl.gov Six researchers have been elected into the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced their 2022 Fellows, including six scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This lifetime honor, which follows…

Kenichi Soga named to National Academy of Engineers1 min read

February 23, 2023

Faculty scientist Kenichi Soga was named to the National Academy of Engineering (NA), one of the highest honors that can be achieved as an American engineer. Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering and a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has conducted groundbreaking research from infrastructure sensing to…

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