Calculations supporting evaluation of potential environmental standards for Yucca Mountain
- INTERA, Inc., Las Vegas, NV (United States)
The Energy Policy Act of 1992, Section 801 (US Congress, 1992) provides for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to contract the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct a study and provide findings and recommendations on reasonable standards for the disposal of high-level wastes at the Yucca Mountain site. The NAS study is to provide findings and recommendations which include, among other things, whether a health-based standard based on dose to individual members of the public from releases to the accessible environment will provide a reasonable standard for the protection of the health and safety of the public. The EPA, based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the NAS, is required to promulgate standards for protection of the public from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in a repository at the Yucca Mountain site. This document presents a number of different ``simple`` analyses of undisturbed repository performance that are intended to provide input to those responsible for setting appropriate environmental standards for a potential repository at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. Each of the processes included in the analyses has been simplified to capture the primary significance of that process in containing or isolating the waste from the biosphere. In these simplified analyses, the complex waste package interactions were approximated by a simple waste package ``failure`` distribution which is defined by the initiation and rate of waste package ``failures``. Similarly, releases from the waste package and the engineered barrier system are controlled by the very near field environment and the presence and rate of advective and diffusive release processes. Release was approximated by either a simple alteration-controlled release for the high solubility radionuclides and either a diffusive or advective-controlled release for the solubility-limited radionuclides.
- Research Organization:
- TRW Environmental Safety Systems, Inc., Las Vegas, NV (United States); INTERA, Inc., Las Vegas, NV (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC01-91RW00134
- OSTI ID:
- 145355
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/RW/00134-T10; ON: DE94015897; TRN: 94:015475
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Apr 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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