David Hodgkinson, Quintessa's founder and first Managing Director, has decided to retire after a long and illustrious career in the nuclear industry spanning 45 years which has included: research fellowships at European Centre for Nuclear Research and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; establishing the Environmental Division of Intera Information Technologies; and founding Quintessa in 1999... Full Details

Quintessa is pleased to welcome Rebecca Newson to our Henley-on-Thames office as a member of the Assessment and Decision Support team. Two placement students, Matt Foster and Ben McMahon, have joined us from the University of Bath as part of 'thick-sandwich' Masters courses in Mathematics and in Mathematics & Physics, respectively. In July, Mathilde Santucci worked at Quintessa for four weeks during her summer vacation from Aix-Marseille University.

The long timescales involved in assessing safety of radioactive waste disposal means that the potential for climate and landscape evolution typically need to be taken into account. Quintessa has taken the technical lead of a four-year project to support Radioactive Waste Management Ltd’s (RWM) contribution to collaborative work on this topic within the International Atomic Energy Agency MODARIA programme (2012-2015)... Full Details

On 13th and 14th July, Quintessa attended a conference "Sharing an Uncertain World: Lessons in Managing Risk" at the Geological Society, Burlington House. The conference drew together speakers working in various geosciences and other sectors. It was one of a series of events on the topic of risk, which is the Geological Society’s theme for 2017, its "Year of Risk"... Full Details

Quintessa is playing a leading role in the EURATOM Horizon2020 project "Beacon: Bentonite Mechanical Evolution". Quintessa attended the Initial Workshop for Beacon hosted by the Lithuanian Energy Institute in Kaunas, Lithuania, in June 2017 at which partners and other interested parties presented and discussed work that has been carried out on the mechanical properties of bentonite... Full Details

On 7-9 December 2016, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) hosted the fifth International Conference on Geological Repositories (ICGR 2016) jointly with the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency, Andra, in Paris, France. Russell Walke from Quintessa acted as Technical Rapporteur on behalf of the NEA and drafted a synthesis report for the conference... Full Details