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Near-Field Thermal-Hydrological Behavior for Alternative Repository Designs at Yucca Mountain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2012

Thomas A. Buscheck ,
John J. Nitao  and
Lawrence D. Ramspott
Thomas A. Buscheck
Affiliation:
Geological Sciences and Environmental Technologies Division, LLNL
John J. Nitao
Affiliation:
Geological Sciences and Environmental Technologies Division, LLNL
Lawrence D. Ramspott
Affiliation:
TRW (all at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, L-206, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94551)
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Abstract

Three-dimensional calculations that explicitly represent a realistic mixture of waste packages (WPs) are used to analyze decay-heat-driven thermal-hydrological behavior around emplacement drifts in a potential high-level waste facility at Yucca Mountain. Calculations, using the NUFT code, compare two fundamentally different ways that WPs can be arranged in the repository, with a focus on temperature, relative humidity, and liquid-phase flux on WPs. These quantities strongly affect WP integrity and the mobilization and release of radionuclides from WPs. Point-load spacing, which places the WPs roughly equidistant from each other, thermally isolates WPs from each other, causing large variability in temperature, relative humidity, and liquid-phase flux along the drifts. Line-load spacing, which places WPs nearly end to end in widely spaced drifts, results in more locally intensive and uniform heating along the drifts, causing hotter, drier, and more uniform conditions. A larger and more persistent reduction in relative humidity on WPs occurs if the drifts are backfilled with a low-thermal-conductivity granular material with hydrologie properties that minimize moisture wicking.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 465: Symposium II – Scienfific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XX , 1996 , 1029
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1997

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References

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