Quintessa, with WSP and NSG Environmental, has helped the Dounreay site - a division of Magnox Ltd - to reassess their 'End State'. The Dounreay site in North Scotland is undergoing decommissioning and waste management to achieve a safe and sustainable End State – the final condition for the restored land. Full details…

Quintessa has recently supported the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) through independent review of Early Risk Assessments for the subsurface CO₂ sequestration stores beyond Phase 1 at the Endurance carbon store. This work builds on the support that Quintessa has previously provided to the NEP, which focussed on reviewing its subsurface risk management plan for the Endurance carbon store. Full details…

Quintessa’s compartment modelling tool, AMBER, has reached its 30th birthday. It has evolved significantly over the years and now allows users to build and visualise 3D dynamic compartment models of contaminants in environmental, biological and engineered systems. It can be used to simulate contamination from historic, routine, accidental and long-term release situations. Full details…

Quintessa is fully committed to its on-going programme of AMBER maintenance and development and has recently released AMBER 6.7 which includes new features to support the quality assurance of AMBER models, as well as a number of calculation and usability improvements. Full details…

Quintessa continues to provide AMBER training courses which typically cover the application of AMBER, as well as the fundamental principles of safety cases and safety assessments. In June 2023, Quintessa provided a week-long in-person tailored AMBER training course to Assystem (BU C2D - Cycle, Dismantling, Defence). Full details…

Over the last 6 months, Quintessa employees have attended a number of international conferences to present their work.

• Emma Rhodes and Alan Paulley attended this year's Waste Management Symposia Conference in Phoenix, USA presenting papers on the Dounreay Site End State work and optimisation at the UK's low-level waste repository. Full details…
• Steve Benbow, Richard Metcalfe and Renato Zagorscak attended the First Energy Geoscience Conference (EGC1) in Aberdeen, UK which explored the contribution of geology and geophysics to the low-carbon energy transition. They presented papers on: coupled modelling of brine availability in salt-based disposal systems; the incorporation of rock matrix diffusion (RMD) in safety assessment models and its contribution to contaminant retardation; and well decommissioning. Full details…
• Alex Bond and Claire Watson presented work at the 7^th workshop of the DECOVALEX-2023 project in Busan, South Korea on: radionuclide migration from a generic repository in a salt host rock for a shaft seal failure scenario; and the modelling of brine migration under complex THM conditions based on the salt heater test (BATS) at the WIPP disposal facility. Full details…

Two students, Jennifer Wilson from the University of Manchester and Tom Robson from the University of Bath, have joined us on year-long placements as part of their undergraduate courses in Environmental Science and Physics with Astrophysics, respectively. Jen and Tom will be working with us on a range of mathematical modelling, geoscience, decision support and software development projects over the next year. Full details…