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The role of ESD's Nuclear Waste Program (NWP) is to assist the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States, and other countries in solving the problem of the safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste--by means of high-quality scientific analyses and technology development. The major portion of this program involves investigating the feasibility and potential of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste. The NWP has also collaborated on nuclear-waste disposal issues with such countries as Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, China, Romania, and others.
The Yucca Mountain site is located about 120 km northwest of Las Vegas in a semi-arid region. The proposed repository will be located about 350 m below ground surface within a thick unsaturated zone (UZ). Subsurface rocks at Yucca Mountain consist primarily of fractured volcanic tuffs that vary in degree of welding. To date, a total of about 60 deep surface boreholes have been drilled in the area. In 1996, an 8 km long underground tunnel, the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF), was completed at Yucca Mountain to facilitate more extensive subsurface testing.
NWP's work at Yucca Mountain consists of solving many problems related to multiphase, nonisothermal flow and transport through the UZ. Some of the key questions addressed by NWP scientists include:
- How much water percolates through the UZ to the repository at Yucca Mountain?
- What fraction of the water flows in fractures and what fraction flows through the rock matrix blocks?
- How much of this water will seep into the emplacement drifts (tunnels)?
- How will radionuclides migrate from the repository to the water table?
- How will coupled TH (thermal-hydrological), THC (thermal-hydrological-chemical) and THM (thermal-hydrological-mechanical) processes affect flow and transport?
To address these questions, the NWP is organized into the Ambient Testing, Thermal Testing, and Modeling groups, with support from geophysical studies.
For more information, please contact:
Jens Birkholzer
Nuclear Waste Program Head
Phone: 510-486-7134
Fax: 510-486-5686
Email: JTBirkholzer@lbl.gov
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