What are your site selection criteria? In particular, driving forces and flow paths (heads, hydraulic gradients, distance etc.).

Deep Isolation is in the process of establishing requirements for a suitable candidate site. Ultimately, safe isolation of waste can be achieved by multiple combinations of complementary and redundant safety features of the total repository system, i.e., the required properties of each repository subcomponent are site-specific. Nevertheless, some general criteria can be stated, such as: geologic stability; the age of the water in the disposal horizon; the isolation of the water at the disposal horizon from water above and below; geochemical conditions that favor the preservation of engineered barriers and promote geochemical immobilization or retardation of radionuclides along their migration path toward the receptor; and long radionuclide transport times from the disposal section to the accessible environment. All of these technical and regulatory requirements are necessary, but a primary element to successfully selecting a site is community acceptance. This is an earned achievement which we plan to accomplish by working closely and collaboratively with any potential host community.