How to Shape a Successful Repository Program: Staged Development of Geologic Repositories for High-Level Waste
Programs to manage and ultimately dispose of high-level radioactive wastes are unique from scientific and technological as well as socio-political aspects. From a scientific and technological perspective, high-level radioactive wastes remain potentially hazardous for geological time periods--many millennia--and scientific and technological programs must be put in place that result in a system that provides high confidence that the wastes will be isolated from the accessible environment for these many thousands of years. Of course, ''proof'' in the classical sense is not possible at the outset, since the performance of the system can only be known with assurance, if ever, after the waste has been emplaced for those geological time periods. Adding to this challenge, many uncertainties exist in both the natural and engineered systems that are intended to isolate the wastes, and some of the uncertainties will remain regardless of the time and expense in attempting to characterize the system and assess its performance.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 839393
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Americas Nuclear Energy Symposium (ANES 2004), Miami, FL (US), 10/03/2004--10/06/2004; Other Information: PBD: 3 Oct 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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