Andra and BRGM extend their R&D partnership

On 9 February 2024, Andra and BRGM signed a new 5-year partnership agreement.

9 February 2024

On Friday 9 February 2024, Catherine Lagneau, BRGM Chair and CEO, and Pierre-Marie Abadie, Director General of Andra, signed a new 5-year partnership agreement at Andra's offices in Châtenay-Malabry.

As long-standing partners in the geosciences, Andra and BRGM have set themselves the goal of digitally transforming knowledge of geological systems and building a digital twin of the subsurface.

On 9 February 2024 in Châtenay-Malabry, Catherine Lagneau, BRGM Chair and CEO, and Pierre-Marie Abadie, Director General of Andra, signed a new 5-year partnership agreement.

4 strategic fields for 5 years of collaboration

This new agreement covers 4 major fields:

geology, geodynamics and hydrogeology,
high-performance numerical simulation,
the digital twin, data processing and artificial intelligence,
geochemistry.

Geology, geodynamics and hydrogeology

In 2025-2026, BRGM will support Andra’s drilling of about a hundred boreholes for the Cigéo project, aimed at consolidating the hydrogeological model of the Barrois limestone formations: the data collected from these boreholes will help to clarify our knowledge and understanding of water flows in the geological formation on which the Cigéo surface facilities will be built.

The collaboration will also prepare the methods and tools needed to characterise the geological environment during the excavation of Cigéo's underground facilities (acquisition of geophysical data, recurrent analyses, core sampling, etc.) without hampering operational conditions during the building of the structures.

BRGM and Andra also wish to pool their knowledge of models of the geological formations of the central and eastern Paris Basin, in line with the work co-directed by BRGM on the French Geological Reference (RGF) and the national subsurface programme.

High-performance numerical simulation

This area focuses on the continued development of means of representing the evolution of geological environments at their interface with industrial activities. Numerical simulations are key tools for assessing and predicting the operation and multi-physical evolution (water, gas, mechanics, etc.) of these multi-medium systems (geological formations, cementitious materials, steel, etc.) over large time and space scales.

These tools will enable the Cigéo project team to check that the behaviour and evolution of the storage facilities are consistent with those expected, while they will be used by BRGM to assess, for example, the long-term behaviour of CO₂ during storage in deep saline aquifers or for hydrothermal modelling of geothermal systems.

Simulation tools need to be continuously improved and developed to meet the increasing demands for representation of all processes and components, and for robust results and performance in terms of computing time.

Digital twin, data processing and artificial intelligence

This area covers the creation of tools for developing and deploying digital twins of complex systems such as a storage facility or, more broadly, a complex geological environment. There are numerous applications that will enhance the monitoring and observation of the components of the industrial project, such as the evolution of underground structures and their geological environment and also the interpretation of data from experiments or demonstrator facilities.

BRGM and Andra aim to develop joint tools that include the specific characteristics of industrial projects in geological environments.

Geochemistry

The main themes of interest are the chemistry of water in geological formations and materials used in industrial facilities (for example, the use of clay for sealing in Cigéo) in natural contexts and at interfaces with the atmosphere and biosphere. This area also focuses on the fate of metals and chemical toxins in natural and industrial environments. In particular, BRGM and Andra have long developed a thermodynamic database tailored to storage, which can now be used to model the chemical interactions that occur in such an environment.

In their words

The work carried out in partnership with Andra addresses R&D issues that echo the scientific challenges that underpin BRGM's strategy, i.e. knowledge and digital representation of geological systems, imaging and dynamic modelling of the subsurface, management and mitigation of industrial impacts on the ground and subsurface. It also includes the role of the subsurface as a supplier of resources (energy, water, minerals, etc.) and space (for storing waste or gas, etc.) in the energy transition, and the central role that digital technology will play in understanding an environment that remains difficult to access. Beyond the technical aspects, the subsurface is also an invisible space that has long been missing in the societal debate and whose possible uses crystallise frequent opposition, which must be considered from both a sociological and anthropological perspective. BRGM and ANDRA are facing many of the same challenges in all these areas, and the joint R&D programmes we are conducting are enabling us to consolidate the cross-disciplinary expertise of both institutions.

Christophe Poinssot, BRGM Deputy Managing Director and Scientific Director

BRGM is a key scientific partner with whom Andra has worked for many years on all its major projects (Cigéo, FAVL, etc.). Our fruitful collaboration, involving both experimentation and modelling, has made a major contribution to developing the geochemical models used for assessing storage performance. Recent advances in digital technology will open up new possibilities for representing an industrial project such as Cigéo, in its geological environment, even more effectively.

Jean-Charles Robinet, Department Head in Andra's Scientific and Technical Division and technical referent for the agreement

A quote from Henry Ford sums up the fruitful collaboration between the Andra and BRGM teams: "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together means success".

Francis Claret, Director of the Energy Transition and Underground Space scientific programme at BRGM and technical referent for this agreement

Since 1998, the partnership with BRGM has focused on geology and geochemistry. With the development of the Cigéo project, the focus of R&D is shifting towards the hydrology and hydrogeology of surface geological formations, in particular to meet the needs for monitoring surface facilities. The other major area of cooperation between our two organisations concerns digital technology in the broadest sense. The work carried out jointly on numerical methods within the EURAD European research programme led by Andra will be continued under the future EURAD-2 European programme starting in October 2024. Moreover, Andra and BRGM will continue to develop tools for simulating the transfer of water and gas in the geological environment. For Andra, this work is part of an approach aimed at regularly updating its computing tools, in particular for optimising storage. Finally, the two organisations want to create synergy around digital twins for industrial projects in geological environments.

Stéphan Schumacher, Scientific and Technical Director at Andra