Arbeitsbericht NAB 14-78

Safety Considerations for a Trackless Transport System (Heavy Load Vehicle) for a Future Geological Repository

In Switzerland there are currently six regions under consideration for hosting a deep geological repository for nuclear waste. The host rocks can be found several hundreds of meters below surface. There are several possibilities for accessing these deep geological repository facilities, e.g. access tunnels (straight, winding or spiral ramps), shafts (vertical or inclined, "day shafts" (shafts reaching to the surface) or "blind shafts" (shafts reaching to a surface-near, but underground area, including a more or less horizontal access tunnel)), or even combinations of tunnels and shafts.

Underground access structures cross the rock formations above the host rocks and contain installations for transportation of materials, goods and/or people. Depending on the type of the access structure, there are various transportation systems possible, e.g. rack railway, cable car, shaft transport, trackless transport.