Progress in Waste Package and Engineered Barrier System Performance Assessment and Design

1992 ◽  
Vol 294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Van LUIK ◽  
David Stahl ◽  
Diane Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Performance Assessment ◽  
System Performance ◽  
Site Suitability ◽  
Waste Package ◽  
Waste Repository ◽  
Engineered Barrier ◽  
High Level ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACTAs part of the U.S. Department of Energy's evaluation of site suitability for a potential high-level radioactive waste repository, long-term interactions between the engineered barrier system and the site must be determined. This requires a waste-package/engineered-system design, a description of the environment around the emplacement zone, and models that simulate operative processes describing these engineered/natural system interactions. Candidate designs are being evaluated, including a more robust, multi-barrier waste package, and a drift emplacement mode. Tools for evaluating designs and emplacement mode are the currently available waste-package/engineered-system performance assessment codes developed for the project. For assessments that support site suitability, environmental impact, or licensing decisions, more capable codes are needed. Code capability requirements are being written, and existing codes are to be evaluated against those requirements. Recommendations are being made to focus waste-package/engineered-system code-development.

scholarly journals Total-System Performance Assessment for the Yucca Mountain Site

2002 ◽  
Vol 713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wilson ◽  
Peter N. Swift ◽  
Jerry A. McNeish ◽  
S. David Sevougian
Keyword(s):  
Performance Assessment ◽  
System Performance ◽  
Safety Assessment ◽  
Yucca Mountain ◽  
Total System ◽  
Package Design ◽  
Waste Package ◽  
Igneous Activity ◽  
Nominal Performance ◽  
High Level

ABSTRACTYucca Mountain, Nevada, is under consideration as a potential site for a repository for high-level radioactive waste. Total-system performance-assessment simulations are performed to evaluate the safety of the site. Features, events, and processes have been systematically evaluated to determine which ones are significant to the safety assessment. Computer models of the disposal system have been developed within a probabilistic framework, including both engineered and natural components. Selected results are presented for three different total-system simulations, and the behavior of the disposal system is discussed. The results show that risk is dominated by igneous activity at early times, because the robust waste-package design prevents significant nominal (non-disruptive) releases for tens of thousands of years or longer. The uncertainty in the nominal performance is dominated by uncertainties related to waste-package corrosion at early times and by uncertainties in the natural system, most significantly infiltration, at late times.

A Combined Analytical Model for Performance Assessment of the Waste Package/ Geologic Medium Systems

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asit K. Ray ◽  
Shyam Nair ◽  
H. Eric Nuttall
Keyword(s):  
Radioactive Waste ◽  
Ground Water ◽  
Performance Assessment ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
Water Penetration ◽  
Waste Package ◽  
Geologic Medium ◽  
Isolation Systems ◽  
High Level

Geologic waste isolation systems currently under consideration for long term containment of high-level radioactive waste is based on a set of sequential barriers to release of radionuclides. Recently, Klingsberg and Duguid and Pigford have reviewed in detail the multiple-barrier disposal concept. These barriers are the waste form, canister, buffer, overpack, backfill and geologic media. Each of these barriers acts to retard ground water penetration to the repository as well as migration of radionuclides to the biosphere.

Risk-Based Evaluation of Long-Term Safety for a Yucca Mountain Repository Using the IMARC TSPA Code

2004 ◽  
Vol 824 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kessler ◽  
Michael Apted ◽  
Matthew Kozak ◽  
Wei Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Radioactive Waste ◽  
System Performance ◽  
Yucca Mountain ◽  
Electric Power Research Institute ◽  
Performance Assessments ◽  
Total System ◽  
Spent Fuel ◽  
Waste Repository ◽  
High Level

AbstractThe Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has conducted independent total system performance assessments (TSPAs) of the proposed Yucca Mountain spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste repository for 15 years. EPRI uses its TSPA code, IMARC, currently in its eighth version. The major results of the IMARC-8 analyses are presented in this paper. In all of the situations evaluated by EPRI using IMARC-8, the results for the reference repository concept for Yucca Mountain are well within the regulatory criteria established in the applicable regulations, 10 CFR 63 and 40 CFR 197. Further analyses indicate that at least two of the repository barriers must fail to function as anticipated for dose risks to rise as much as one millirem per year (1/15th of the regulatory limit).

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