Annual Report 2015 Institute of Resource Ecology

• Main Authors: Stumpf, Thorsten, Foerstendorf, Harald, Bok, Frank, Richter, Anke
• Language: English
• Published: Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf 2016
• Subjects: Nukleare Entsorgung; Nuclear Waste Management
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:d120-qucosa-197843; https://hzdr.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A22321; https://hzdr.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A22321/attachment/ATT-0/

The Institute of REsource Ecology (IRE) is one of the eight institutes of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The research activities are mainly integrated into the program “Nuclear Waste Management, Safety and Radiation Research (NUSAFE)” of the Helmholtz Association (HGF) and focused on the topics “Safety of Nuclear Waste Disposal” and “Safety Research for Nuclear Reactors”. Additionally, various activities have been started investigating chemical and environmental aspects of processing and recycling of strategic metals, namely rare earth elements. These activities are located in the HGF program “Energy Efficiency, Materials and Resources (EMR)”. Thus, all scientific work of the IRE belongs to the research field “Energy” of the HGF. The research objective is the protection of humans and the environment from hazards caused by pollutants resulting from technical processes that produce energy and raw materials. Treating technology and ecology as a unity is the major scientific challenge in assuring the safety of technical processes and gaining their public acceptance. We investigate the ecological risks ensued by radioactive and non-radioactive metals in the context of nuclear waste disposal, the production of energy in nuclear power plants and in processes along the value chain of metalliferous raw materials. A common goal is to generate better understanding about the dominating processes essential for metal mobilization and immobilization on the molecular level by using advanced spectroscopic methods. This in turn enables us to assess the macroscopic phenomena, including models, codes and data for predictive calculations, which determine the transport and distribution of contaminants in the environment.