Prof. Kastriot Spahiu

Prof. Kastriot Spahiu is adjunct professor at Chalmers University of Technology, supervising Ph.D. students carrying out research on spent fuel dissolution in groundwater. He was research coordinator for the experimental spent fuel programme and thermodynamic databases at SKB in the period 1995-2018. He co-authors the main reports of Safety Assessments SR-Can (2006) and SR-Site (2011), as well as the corresponding Process Reports and Data Reports. He was member of the SARG-group, reviewing LILW Safety Assessment at SKB. 

He started working in the field of spent fuel disposal since 1979, during his Ph.D. studies at the RIT (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm. At that time the carbonate chemistry of aqueous actinide and lanthanide ions was poorly known and it increased considerably as a result of the work of the carbonate group at RIT under the leadership of Prof. Ingmar Grenthe, and financed by SKB. In the process Kastriot got a solid knowledge of solution thermodynamics, especially on activity coefficient estimations in electrolyte solutions. He was member of the review team of Np-Pu thermodynamic database in the period 1994-2001 and has maintained the interest in this field by being chair or member of the Executive Group of the NEA-TDB project, which produces the high-quality reviews of thermodynamic data for actinides and important fission products used practically in all safety assessments. He has been adviser and reviewer of thermodynamic databases for other waste management organizations, such as ANDRA (France), NIRAS/ONDRAF (Belgium) and RWM (UK).

His introduction in the field of spent fuel dissolution coincided with his start at SKB in 1995 and a few years later the first tests of spent fuel leaching in the presence of hydrogen produced by the anoxic corrosion of iron were undertaken at Studsvik. Since then Kastriot has devoted most of his time investigating the various aspects of the radiolytically promoted spent fuel dissolution and the inhibiting effect of the anoxic iron corrosion products such as H₂ and Fe(II). Such investigations resulted in the decrease of the dissolution rates of spent fuel under the reducing repository conditions by several orders of magnitude, which has a very large impact in the safety assessment of a spent fuel repository.

Kastriot has been member of the Research Council of ANDRA (France) and of the International Scientific Advisory board of PRECCI, CEA (France), member of the Research Advisory Committee of OPG and NWMO (Canada) and reviewer and adviser of the NIRAS/ONDRAF spent fuel programme. He has been experimental work package leader in EC projects concerning fuel dissolution, such as SFS (2001-2004), NF-PRO (2004-2007) and MICADO (2007-2010). 

During his 44-year work in the field of spent fuel repository research, he co-authors 4 books, more than 90 refereed papers and more than 30 technical reports. He was assigned the task to write a State of the Knowledge report for spent fuel by the EURAD EC project in 2021. He has given invited lectures in several conferences, including MRS Actinides 2008, Migration 2009 and 2017, ANUP 2010, Atalante 2012, Actinides 2013, Goldschmidt 2016 and MRS SBNWM 2016.