Environmental impact of Yucca Mountain repository after Urex+1a separation
Conference
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OSTI ID:20979531
- Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1730 (United States)
The environmental impact of Yucca Mountain Repository (YMR), expressed as the radiotoxicity of radionuclides released from failed waste packages, has been evaluated for the case of partitioning and vitrification the 63,000 MT of commercial spent nuclear fuel (CSNF) currently designated for disposal. A parametric study on the effect of fuel cycle parameters on environmental impact has also been conducted. CSNF inventory has been evaluated by using ORIGEN2. UREX+1a separation is considered as the base case, and the removal of individual nuclide groups has also been investigated. Of particular interest is the effect of Cs/Sr removal on the waste loading of a canister. An existing waste-conditioning model for high-level liquid waste (HLLW) solidification with borosilicate glass is used to determine the composition and waste loading of a vitrified waste canister by a set of waste loading constraints. A previously developed release model has been applied to evaluate the environmental impact of the vitrified waste packages in YMR. Numerical results show that while the removal of Tc and Cs/Sr does not have an effect on the environmental impact profile, it is linearly sensitive to separation efficiency of actinides. The uncertainty associated with the environmental impact resulting from the uncertainties of radionuclide solubility values has been computed. It was determined that in the case of U, TRU, Tc, and Cs/Sr inventory reduction by a factor of 100 and subsequent vitrification, the repository footprint would decrease by a factor of 3.4, implying that 3.4 times more electricity generation could be accommodated while the environmental impact is up to a factor of 100 smaller than the direct disposal case. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 20979531
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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