Unsaturated flow modeling in performance assessments for the Yucca Mountain disposal system for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste

Is Yucca Mountain a long-term solution for disposing of US spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste?

On 26 January 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future released a report addressing, amongst other matters, options for the managing and disposal of high-level waste and spent fuel. The Blue Ribbon Commission was not chartered as a siting commission. Accordingly, it did not evaluate Yucca Mountain or any other location as a potential site for the storage or disposal of spent...

Progression of performance assessment modeling for the Yucca Mountain disposal system for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste

This paper summarizes the evolution of consequence modeling for a repository for spent nuclear fuel and highlevel radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. The discussion includes four early performance assessments (PAs) conducted between 1982 and 1995 to support selection and to evaluate feasibility and three major PAs conducted between 1998 and 2008 to evaluate viability, recomm...

Site selection and regulatory basis for the Yucca Mountain disposal system for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste

This paper summarizes the historical events from the identification of the Yucca Mountain site in southern Nevada in 1978 to its selection by the US Congress as the sole site to characterize for a repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 1987. Coincident with this selection process and later site characterization, the US spent from 1977 to 2009 establishing long-ter...

Supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada (doe/eis-0250d-s) Formal Response Submitted by Clark County, Nevada

Confronting the nuclear legacy--Part III. Can nuclear waste be stored safely at Yucca Mountain?

In the half century of the nuclear age, the U.S. has accumulated some 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods from power reactors and another 380,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste, a by-product of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. None of these materials have found anything more than interim accommodation, despite decades of study and expenditures in the billions of dollars ...