The Horonobe Underground Research Center is situated in an area of gentle hills characterised by periglacial landforms, approximately 1,100 km north of Tokyo, in Horonobe Town, northern Hokkaido.

The Horonobe Underground Research Center has surface and subsurface facilities: the surface facilities consist of a research and administration facility and a public relations (PR) facility; the subsurface facilities, designated as the Horonobe Underground Research Laboratory (URL), comprise three shafts, galleries, experimental niches and a wastewater treatment facility.

The Horonobe URL is a generic URL exclusively dedicated to research and development (R&D) on geological disposal technologies for high-level radioactive waste and NOT for repository implementation. This URL is constructed in the host Neogene sedimentary rocks in which suitable thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (T-H-M-C) conditions of importance to geological disposal have been maintained over millions of years despite fault movement, constant uplift / erosion and periodic sea-level changes, thus providing an environment that could be analogous to that of a repository site. This could allow the understanding of the subsurface environment (eg T-H-M-C conditions and their resilience to perturbations) to be enhanced and also relevant models and techniques to be developed and tested in an effective and efficient manner.