Alex Bond attended a recent workshop in York hosted by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The workshop’s focus was on understanding how best to use the ongoing and planned expansion of Boulby Underground Laboratory, located in Boulby halite, potash and polyhalite mine, North Yorkshire, to inform the laboratory’s experiments.
The laboratory currently hosts a range of high-energy physics experiments (notably looking for “dark matter”) and material characterisation facilities, which all benefit from the low cosmic radiation environment at over 1 km depth. It also hosts an ‘outdoor’ area which continues to be used for astrobiology, planetary exploration and salt cavern research. Through the discussions, it was clear that the opportunities that a location such as Boulby provides are tremendous to both fundamental geoscience and wider geoengineering, such as radioactive waste management, CCS and hydrogen storage.
Alex was invited to attend due to his leadership of the DECOVALEX project and his general involvement in complex coupled modelling and underground research. As part of the workshop, some of the participants, including Alex, were able to go down the mine and visit the current Boulby laboratory. It was a fascinating visit and workshop that will hopefully give rise to important earth science research that the UK needs to support Net Zero and the management of UK legacy wastes.