An Overview of a natural analogue study of the Tono Uranium Deposit, central Japan

Sasao, Eiji   ; Ota, Kunio ; Iwatsuki, Teruki  ; Niizato, Tadafumi  ; Arthur, R. C,*; Stenhouse, M. J.*; Zhou, W.*; Metcalfe, R.*; Takase, Hiroyasu; MacKenzie, A. B.*

The present natural analogue study of the Tono uranium deposit (Tono Natural Analogue Project) was started in 2001 with the main aim of studying a worst case scenario for safety assessment. The project has involved characterising the geology, hydrogeology, geochemistry and microbiology of the deposit and obtaining quantitative information about specific times in the past, as a means for developing, and building confidence in, conceptual and numerical models. Some recent results from site investigations, such as depositional age of the host sedimentary sequence and fault activity, are presented in this paper and in other papers in the series.