Tim Schöne

ERE Energy, Resources and the Environment

The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Tim Schöne for the poster/PICO entitled:

Effects of the hydrogeochemical variability of pore water in the Opalinus Clay and its surrounding aquifers on uranium migration (Schöne, T.; Hennig, T.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Tim Schöne is a PhD student in the “Reactive Fluids and Geomaterials” section at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences and the University of Potsdam under the supervision of Dr. Theresa Hennig and Prof. Michael Kühn. After completing his master’s degree in hydrogeology and working as an environmental consultant for five years, he began his research in Potsdam (Germany) in October 2024. His work focuses on reactive transport simulations in the context of safety assessments for nuclear waste disposal, with a particular interest in hydrogeological and hydrogeochemical effects on radionuclide migration. 

In the study presented on his poster at EGU25, Tim examined how the chemical variability of pore water from the potential host rock Opalinus Clay and groundwater of the surrounding aquifers affects the migration of uranium over one million years. The work highlights that the present-day pore water chemistry (i.e. model initial conditions) is more decisive for uranium migration in the investigated host rock system than the spatial and temporal variability of groundwater chemistry (i.e. model boundary conditions). 

Publication resulting from this award
This work will be published in a special issue of the division Energy, Resources and the Environment (ERE) of the EGU in the Journal Advances in Geosciences in 2025 and is recently in review as "Schöne, T. and Hennig, T.: Pore water or groundwater chemistry: what governs uranium migration in Opalinus Clay?"