Nils-Axel Mörner

Nils-Axel MörnerNils-Axel Mörner, Geologist, Sweden.

Topic: Dry Rock Deposit.
Date: Saturday 28 April 2007, 11:00-12:00.
Conference presentation (PDF, 850 KB)
Conference lecture audio recording (MP3, length 20:18, size 4.8 MB)

Selected publications

Contact information:
E-mail: morner (@) pog.nu

Biographical Notes

Nils-Axel Mörner, Ph.D. (1969) is a geologist and geophysicist. He was head of The Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics (P&G) Department at Stockholm University (1991-2005), where 10 students completed their Ph.D. and where there were numerous international guest scientists. 

As secretary and later president of the INQUA Neotectonics Commission (1978-1989), and as Editor of the Neotectonics Bulletin (1978-1996), he developed the subject of Neotectonics and introduced the subject of Paleoseismicity. He and his students were able to document that Sweden, at the time of deglaciation, was a high-seismic area in magnitude as well as in frequency. Their Paleoseismic Catalogue now includes 58 high-magnitude events. Besides numerous research articles, he has published an in depth monograph titled "Paleoseismicity of Sweden - a novel paradigm," which is a standard reference textbook of the subject matter.

In 1977 he wrote a critical assessment of nuclear waste management that documents observed paleoseismics and neotectonics, and Ice Age problems of permafrost and reversed water circulation ("Rörelser och instabilitet i den svenska berggrunden: geo-arv, landhöjning, oregelbundenheter, senglacial tektonik/seismicitet, fram-tidsutsikter." KBS Teknisk Rapport 18, 36 sidor. 1977). He concluded that an accessible/controllable deposition was preferable to deep bedrock depostion. He has written critical reviews of all the FUD reports and argued for a "dry rock deposition" (the DRD method). The pros and cons are discussed in a paper with Björn Cronhjort in Radwaste Solutions (May-June, 2004, 44-47) and in a paper in Engeneering Geology (vol. 61, 2001, 75-82).