Evaluation of Cavity Collapse and Surface Crater Formation for Selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Tests - 2011
This report evaluates collapse evolution for selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) underground nuclear tests at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS, formerly called the Nevada Test Site). The work is being done at the request of National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) and supports the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration for the Nevada Site Office Borehole Management Program (BMP). The primary objective of this program is to close (plug) weapons program legacy boreholes that are deemed no longer useful. Safety decisions must be made before a crater area, or potential crater area, can be reentered for any work. Our statements on cavity collapse and crater formation are input into their safety decisions. The BMP is an on-going program to address hundreds of boreholes at the NTS. Each year NSTec establishes a list of holes to be addressed. They request the assistance of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory Containment Programs to provide information related to the evolution of collapse history and make statements on completeness of collapse as relates to surface crater stability. These statements do not include the effects of erosion that may modify the collapse craters over time. They also do not address possible radiation dangers that may be present. Subject matter experts from the LLNL Containment Program who had been active in weapons testing activities performed these evaluations. Information used included drilling and hole construction, emplacement and stemming, timing and sequence of the selected test and nearby tests, geology, yield, depth of burial, collapse times, surface crater sizes, cavity and crater volume estimations, ground motion, and radiological release information. Both classified and unclassified data were reviewed. Various amounts of information are available for these tests, depending on their age and other associated activities. Lack of data can hamper evaluations and introduce uncertainty. We make no attempt to quantify this uncertainty. The following unclassified summary statements describe collapse evolution and crater stability in response to a recent request to review 3 LLNL test locations in areas 2 and 12: Kennebec in U2af, Cumberland in U2e, and Yuba in U12b.10.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 1021060
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-TR-471719; TRN: US201117%%21
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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