Markus Furche

Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe | BGR

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of VR-EX, a combination of a virtual field trip and a serious game in immersive virtual reality. The application’s purpose is the communication of research conducted in the Mont Terri underground research laboratory in Switzerland. VR-EX enables users to actively attend electrical resis...

In the Mont Terri Rock Laboratory (Switzerland), an interdisciplinary examination program is carried out to increase knowledge about coupled hydro-mechanical effects in Opalinus Clay, which are of significant interest regarding the stability and integrity of a potential storage facility for high-level radioactive waste. This article focuses on the...

The Progressive Failure (PF) project explores experimentally and numerically structurally-controlled damage evolution in faulted Opalinus Clay shale at 1:5 scale in the Mont Terri URL, Switzerland. The in-situ experiment consists of a central, large-diameter experiment borehole (representing a repository drift) and six monitoring boreholes. The exp...

A necessary and important component for the closure of deep geological repositories (accessed by a shaft) is a shaft-sealing system that limits the fluid inflow from the adjacent rock to the repository in the early post-closure phase and delays the release of possibly contaminated fluids from the repository at a later stage. The Sandwich system dev...

Tectonic fault zones with vertical offsets < 20 m at depth levels of a nuclear waste repository (400–800 mbgs) cannot be predicted precisely nor completely from seismic measurements carried out at the ground surface prior to repository excavation. Excavating repository drifts or access tunnels into such faults at acute angles may lead to deep rock...

The Progressive Failure of Structurally Controlled Overbreaks (PF) experiment explores the evolution and extent of structurally controlled rock mass damage in and around faulted Opalinus Clay shale. In unfavourable situations, acute angled fault zones may lead to deep rock mass damage and / or large tunnel caving / overbreak in the order of seve...

A potential repository site for high-level radioactive waste should ensure the highest possible safety level over a period of one million years. In addition to design issues, demonstrating the integrity of the barrier is essential as it ensures the long-term containment of radioactive waste. Therefore, a multi-disciplinary approach is necessary for...

Shaft-sealing systems for nuclear waste repositories are constructed to limit fluid inflow from the adjacent rock during the early stage after closure of the repository and to delay the release of possibly contaminated fluids from the repository at later stages. Current German concepts of shaft seals contain the hydraulic sandwich sealing system as...

Opalinus Clay is considered a potential host rock for radioactive waste disposal. The Jurassic claystone formation is composed of several facies and subfacies types, which are characterized by varying amounts of quartz, carbonates (cements and fossils) and clay minerals. To provide samples for ongoing experimental and numerical studies, a complete...

Examples of underground exploration by geophysics in clay, crystalline and salt for the search of a site to store high-level radioactive waste carried out by the Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) in Hannover, Germany (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources) https://dgg-online.de/WordPress_01/wp-content/upload...

Claystone is a potential host rock for the longterm storage of high radioactive waste. This type of rock is characterised by a complex, highly-coupled hydraulic-mechanical behavior. The physical understanding of the related effects is of great importance to understand the stability and the integrity of a potential repository. The CD-A experiment ad...

Detection and quantification of different gas species in the vadose zone of soils and/or in the atmospheric boundary layer is a key method in many fields of environmental research and also considered as one element of monitoring related to carbon storage operations. We have developed a robust and economic continuous soil gas monitoring system, whic...

For enhanced gas recovery (EGR) using CO2 as well as for CO2 storage in depleted gas fields it needs to be shown that injection and storage is save and neither population nor environment is exposed to risks during operation or afterwards. This requires the development and application of methods to monitor groundwater, vadose zone and atmosphere. Th...

One of the most vigorously discussed issues related to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the public and scientific community is the development of adequate monitoring strategies. Geological monitoring is mostly related to large scale migration of the injected CO2 in the storage formations. However, public interest (or fear as that) is more relate...

Setup and first results of an ongoing research activity are presented, which is funded by the German Geotechnologien program within in the joint project CLEAN (CO2 Large Scale Enhanced Gas Recovery in the Altmark Natural Gas Field). The task is to establish several soil gas monitoring stations above a partly exhausted gas field in the Altmark which...

The sequestration of CO2 in sub-seabed geological formations is one of the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) strategies currently under study. Although offshore operations are significantly more expensive than comparable onshore operations, the growing public resistance against onshore CCS projects makes sub-seabed storage a promising option. Even a...

In more recent times Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) has become a valuable tool for many environmental research themes. Within these topics the resistivity contrasts of the different layers and zones are of importance, i.e. sand, clay, water salinity and preferential infiltration pathways are quite small. Inclusions with such small resistiv...

In the inversion of ERT measurements we usually treat the electrodes as points. However, for small-scale arrays, e.g. lysimeter studies, this assumption may lead to severe misinterpretations. We present a method to incorporate both the electrode shape and its contact impedance in the finite element simulation using the complete electrode model. We...

The mining residues at the abandoned copper mine site Peña de Hierro, located at the headwaters of the Rio Tinto, contribute substantially to the pollution of the river with high loads of Fe, As, Pb, Zn and Cu. The pH of the outflow ranges from 0.5 to 2.4 in the dry and wet season, respectively. One heap composed of alternating layers, which were d...

The roles of mineral dissolution, precipitation, transformation and mass transport processes related to formation of characteristic cemented layer–hardpan sequences were studied in low sulfide and low carbonate Freiberg polymetallic mine tailings. Using high resolution profiling, combined geochemical, geomicrobiological and geophysical methods allo...

Multi-electrode resistivity data can be used to compute the measurable response for conventional and focused configurations. Some of them are appropriate for detecting layer boundaries. Three different configurations are investigated concerning their suitability for identification of bed boundaries: a second difference configuration, a combined lat...

The sensitivity distributions of different electrode configurations are computed for both a homogeneous resistivity distribution and a model consisting of two vertical zones of homogeneous resistivity. The inner zone around the borehole axis represents a borehole filled with mud and the outer zone is the undisturbed formation. The sensitivity of th...