The construction of a bedrock geology model for England and Wales

Government policy for the long-term management of the UK’s higher-activity radioactive waste is geological disposal as outlined in the 2008 Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) White Paper. The Government remains firmly committed to this policy and continues to hold the view that the best means of selecting a site for a geological disposal facility (GDF) is an approach based on voluntarism and partnership. Feedback from a wide range of stakeholders has indicated that a robust presentation of what is known, and what is not known, about the geology of any prospective area is needed at an early stage in the MRWS process. The existing BGS GB3D model provides the only nationally consistent representation of the bedrock geology of Great Britain to depths of at least 1km. The links between this dataset and the underpinning geological evidence needed to be strengthened and rigorous peer review performed to enable an enhanced dataset to inform the MRWS process. So the objective of this study was to further develop the GB3D model in England and Wales by the incorporation of about 300 deep boreholes into the existing framework of cross-sections, reroute some sections to incorporate the borehole data and provide additional sections to densify the network in order to produce a robust, verifiable and defensible dataset.