Common aspects of the PNC and NAGRA assessments of deep repositories for vitrified HLW

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:377955

Smith, P A ^[1]; Umeki, H ^[2]; Neall, F ^[3]; McKinley, I G ^[4]

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1. Intera Information Technologies Ltd., Melton Mowbray (United Kingdom)
2. Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., Tokyo (Japan)
3. Paul Scherrer Inst., Villigen PSI (Switzerland)
4. National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, Wettingen (Switzerland)

The repository concepts developed by PNC and NAGRA for the disposal of vitrified high-level waste show many common features; both concepts involve deep geological disposal, with massive engineered barriers of similar design. PNC and NAGRA have recently published comprehensive performance assessments based on their repository concepts and these are compared in order to gain assurance that the conceptual and mathematical models employed are state-of-the-art and to build confidence in the datasets in the assessment results. The predicted performance of the engineered barriers is more favorable to safety in the case of the NAGRA Assessment, whereas the opposite is true of the geological barriers. These differences in predicted performance can be traced to a small number of differences in model assumptions and data. It is concluded that the difference are consistent with the somewhat different requirements of the two assessments and that the comparison enhances confidence in both assessments.

• OSTI ID: 377955
• Report Number(s): CONF-941075--; ISBN 1-55899-253-7
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CONTAINMENT SYSTEMS
DIFFUSION
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
JAPAN
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PERFORMANCE
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL
RADIOACTIVE WASTE FACILITIES
RADIONUCLIDE MIGRATION
SAFETY ANALYSIS
SOLUBILITY
SWITZERLAND
UNDERGROUND DISPOSAL