Total System Performance Assessment Peer Review Panel-First Interim Report PDF Download

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Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
Predicting the performance of a repository at Yucca Mountain is a technically challenging task. As is noted in Section II, the analysis involves the modeling of complex hydrologic, thermal, chemical, and mechanical interactions over times spanning tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Many of the technical questions that are necessarily addressed in this analysis, for example, the distribution of the time for corrosion to breach the waste canisters, are at the forefront of the capabilities of present day science. With these complexities in mind, the TSPA Peer Review Panel has evaluated work that has been done and that is in progress. This first interim report reflects the Panel's initial review, subject to the following significant limitations: The Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) supporting the Viability Assessment (VA) has not yet been written and, thus, the Panel is reviewing a work in progress. The Panel has available to it previous TSPA reports and various technical reports prepared in support of TSPA. The Panel also has been given briefings on the work being done for the TSPA-VA and has sent Panel members to abstraction meetings conducted by the TSPA-VA team to assign priorities to key technical issues and provide simplified versions of analyses suitable for an integrated analysis of the site as a whole. Members of the Panel have also attended other project workshops. The design of the repository is evolving. A number of aspects of the design have changed since the Panel's first meeting or are under review. Examples include the use of Alloy 625 instead of Alloy 825 as the inner corrosion resistant material of the waste canisters, the potential use of a gravel or sand backfill in the drifts, and consideration of alternative configurations for spent fuel containing highly enriched uranium. The Panel is still in an orientation phase. This is a large and technically diverse project with a long history. In the few months since the Panel's first meeting, members have not had sufficient time to review all relevant documents or to learn of all the work that is being done to support the TSPA-VA.