These first 18 months have been very exciting due to the enthusiasm of all partners to start producing results and when compiling the quarterly reports of all WPs it becomes obvious that we have already accomplished a lot!
We have had our first Project Annual Meeting in Granada with a pre-workshop that was very much appreciated by the participants. Besides getting a good opportunity to meet the project partners we also got a first glimpse of what results and impact our project will have on the design and choice of materials in the ILW and HLW repositories.
Laboratory and in situ experiments have been initiated in order to increase the understanding of microbial processes that are relevant for the safety and performance assessment of a final repository for radioactive waste. Modelling tools are currently being developed in order to be able to include microbial processes. A handful of manuscripts have already been submitted to high impact scientific journals and a number of scientific papers are in preparation. In addition, graduate students have been hired, one course have been held and the project has been presented at a number of conferences and meetings.
We are looking forward to a productive year and to meet again at our next Annual Meeting that will be held in Prague May 3-5, 2017.