The safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste is a key challenge of our time. The graduate school “TRANSFER – Training and Research Academy for Nuclear Safety and Future Expertise on Geological Repository Systems” is dedicated to this task and offers ten PhD students the opportunity to investigate issues relating to disposal in claystone through mutually complementary projects. It brings together various disciplines and equips early-career researchers for roles in academia, industry, government and politics in the field of radioactive waste disposal and beyond. The programme is coordinated by Dr Theresa Hennig, who heads the ‘Geochemistry of Nuclear Waste Disposal’ research group within GFZ Section 3.4 “Reactive Fluids and Geomaterials”.

The research focuses on evaluating claystone formations with regard to their suitability as host rock for final repositories. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of spatial and temporal heterogeneities and their influence on the retention of radionuclides. Initially, the Opalinus Clay serves as a reference material to transfer results from earlier studies – particularly from Switzerland – to deposits in southern Germany and to place them within a broader geological context. Subsequently, the findings will be applied to other clay formations in the North German Basin.

The project commenced on 1 April 2026 and will run for three years. It is a collaborative project involving five Helmholtz Centres and five universities, structured as a graduate school. It is funded equally by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE), with a total of €4 million. Coordination is led by Dr Theresa Hennig (Section 3.4 | Reactive Fluids and Geomaterials).