nuclear-news

The French government wants to bury their nuclear waste in argillite, on top of a geothermal resource site. On Tuesday, 26 January, 2016, a worker was killed and one injured at the site due to collapse of an underground tunnel gallery.

“An argillite /ˈɑrdʒɨlaɪt/ is a fine-grained sedimentary rock composed predominantly of indurated clay particles. Argillaceous rocks are basically lithified muds and oozes. They contain variable amounts of silt-sized particle” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argillite

A child knows that clay becomes soft and unstable when wet. And, that it shrinks and cracks when dry and expands when wet. Residents near the proposed French nuclear waste facility in Bure France have demonstrated that within 16 minutes the “argillite” clay proposed for high level nuclear storage dissolves into gravel clumps. This is because it is hard materials held together by soft materials.

Images from video link at http://www.villesurterre.eu

“Experimental deformation of Bure argillites…