The long-term safety of deep disposal of radioactive waste will be strongly dependent on the performance of the geological setting. The geology fulfils important safety functions including isolating the waste from human contact or intrusion, providing a stable physical and chemical environment, insulating against external disturbances, and preventing or delaying the transport of radioactive materials away from the waste. Thus, a sound understanding of the geology's history and evolution is central in supporting assessments that examine the long-term performance and safety of deep disposal. Geological data can also play an important role in other related activities, such as site selection and repository design.
Through a series of technical workshops, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) project on Approaches and Methods for Integrating Geological Information in the Safety Case (AMIGO), is devoted to defining and improving the collection and use of geological evidence that contribute to the understanding of long-term safety for radioactive waste disposal. The second AMIGO workshop was organised in Canada in September 2005. It examined how geoscientific arguments and data are compiled and linked to create a unified description of the geological setting to support a safety case. It also examined practical aspects and limitations in collecting, linking, extrapolating and communicating such information. These proceedings present the outcomes of the workshop.