Muon tomography for geological repositories

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This proposal is aiming to address key scientific and technological challenges in understanding the structure and evolution
of geological repositories. If successful, this project will deliver a relatively low-cost methodology for monitoring geological
repositories over substantial time scales (hundreds of years) helping humankind deal with the important problems causing
climate change and its effects on the life on the Earth. The programme and its potential impact extend far beyond the
technological advances that the successful completion of the project can bring to science and society.
Built on scientific and technological ideas developed in particle physics and particle astrophysics within STFC remits (muon
detectors for cosmic rays and active veto systems for experiments for rare event searches such as dark matter WIMPs and
neutrinos, detectors for particle tracking at colliders and neutrino physics), as well as on interdisciplinary projects run
together with EPSRC (e.g. muon, gamma-ray and neutron detectors for nuclear security), NERC (e.g. SKY project at
Boulby mine for climate change), our project has an opportunity to further advance the existing detector technology and
expand it to new areas of science and industrial applications.
Understanding the structure and evolution of geological repositories is a key task for a successful implementation of
numerous plans for using them as a storage place for various types of waste, in particular for storage of carbon dioxide.
Mapping the combined rock and interstitial fluid density continuously and inexpensively would provide a major
breakthrough in our ability to develop and realise an essential technology for geological storage of waste, in particular
carbon dioxide. Currently the only methods available to monitor such sites are time-lapse seismic acquisition and a small
suit of similar technologies. These are very expensive, episodic in their application and do not exclusively measure density
changes associated with dense phase CO2 injection and subsequent migration.
The participants of the project together with a large group of scientists working on the muon tomography applications in
various areas of science at Sheffield, Durham and Boulby have strong record in the knowledge transfer activity and are
running or about to run a large variety of projects with government organisations, industry and businesses. A number of
companies have already taken an interest in the muon tomography work for application as a monitoring technique in the
emerging carbon storage industry.
Through our established links with industry we plan to keep these companies informed about our activities and
achievements. The representatives of these companies will be invited to some of our meetings and we plan to attend
conferences and other events with the participation of industrial companies where we will present our results. The
businesses dealing with the development of the carbon capture and storage technologies will be prime beneficiaries of our
research.
Bearing in mind an interdisciplinary character of the proposed research we will establish a programme of knowledge
transfer between particle physics/astrophysics and geology/Earth science. Based on existing partnership within the muon
tomography project between different departments in Sheffield and Durham we will further extend the knowledge exchange
by giving seminars on topics linked to cosmic rays and particle detectors to geologists and Earth scientists, as well as
seminars on carbon capture and storage and its monitoring to particle physicists and astrophysicists.
We will work together with businesses on the improvement to existing scintillators, PMTs and electronics to make it more
suitable, if necessary, for borehole deployment and track reconstruction. This, in return, will provide better instrumentation.