Engineered Barrier Environment Yucca Mountain PDF Download

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is investigating the suitability of Yucca Mountain (YM) as a potential site for the nation's first High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository. This responsibility includes materials testing and selections, design criteria development, waste form characterizations, performance assessments, and Near-Field (NF) environment characterization. These areas of responsibility are interrelated and to a large extent depend on environmental conditions surrounding the EBS components. The focus of this paper is to discuss what is currently known about the NF environment, particularly those aspects whose interaction with EBS components have significant impacts on the performance of the EBS and its ability to contribute to the isolation of radioactive waste. Reference designs and design/processes assumptions are used to evaluate the expected NF environmental conditions. This report will not focus on providing parameter values but rather on the processes that influence those parameters and on the impacts of those parameters on the performance of EBS components. Where values are given, they should be viewed as typical of YM as a whole but not necessarily representative of the actual NF environment conditions that surround the EBS components. 19 refs., 6 figs.