Radioactive waste isolation in salt:

Abstract

Since late 1982, Argonne National Laboratory has been under contract to DOE to conduct multidisciplinary peer reviews of program plans and reports covering research and development activities related to siting, constructing, operating, and decommissioning a high-level radioactive waste repository in salt.Argonne has simultaneously undertaken studies of various topical and regulatory areas to provide background information and support to peer review panelists. This study grew out of discussions on how to evaluate plans for site characterization activities.This study was initiated in the summer of 1984 by Wyman Harrison (chairman of the Argonne peer review panel), with the assistance of Charles H. Dowding of Northwestern University. Participants in the study were to consider how to review and evaluate plans for the measurement activities expected to be part of site characterization. The performance-based requirements of future licensing activities were to be emphasized. Such general considerations were to be more sharply focused by examining existing measurement data for a candidate repository site in salt and by formulating hypothetical plans for additional measurements there. The Richton dome site in Mississippi was chosen for this purpose.Several aspects of potential measurement plans were examined by Argonne participants: Douglas F. Hambley and David F. Fenster considered geological and geophysical work related to site structure and discontinuities, Dorland E. Edgar gathered and reviewed geohydrologic data, John D. Ditmars assessed the measurement needs of groundwater modeling, and Robert E. Rospenda developed cost information on potential measurements. Gregory B. Baecher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined the study group and suggested the S-index approach as a unified means of addressing concerns regarding the uncertainty in the data and its effect on assessing whether performance objectives will be met or exceeded.