Riksriggen

The Swedish research infrastructure for scientific drilling “Riksriggen” is a versatile platform for multidisciplinary subsurface research with a core drilling and testing capacity to 2.5 km depth.

Main questions to be addressed by the infrastructure concern the evolution of the Earth´s crust and processes ongoing within it at present, for example, mountain building and earthquakes.

The infrastructure can also address societal challenges such as natural resources, natural hazards, underground construction and waste disposal.

Geological samples recovered by the infrastructure are used to study topics such as the deep biosphere, chemical composition of rock and fluids, quality and quantity of groundwater resources, storage and extraction of geothermal energy, storage of nuclear waste or CO2, identifying risks with deep mining.

Riksriggen, operated by Lund University, serves the Swedish and international drilling community through the entire life-cycle of scientific drilling and provides qualified support for the technical use of the infrastructure, both advisory and operational. Riksriggen has an established consortium with the following members: LU, UU, LTU and LNU.

Riksriggen has a close collaboration with the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP).

It served three ICDP drillings up to now and has three more ICDP projects preliminarily scheduled (waiting for co-funding). Collaboration with ICDP includes also scientific drilling data management.

In this proposal we ask for financing to secure parts of the fixed costs for managing and operating this national infrastructure and to include the "Stress trailer" into the Riksriggen infrastructure. The Stress trailer is an infrastructure for the evaluation of the state of stress in the subsurface.

It was financed by VR and designed to work with Riksriggen.

It was designed and built by LTU and the intention was from the beginning to integrate it with Riksriggen after completion, which happend in 2018.