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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Jens T. Birkholzer, Sumit Mukhopadhyay, Yvonne Y. W. Tsang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 148 | Number 2 | November 2004 | Pages 138-150
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3554
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Predicting the amount of water that may seep into waste emplacement drifts is important for assessing the performance of the proposed geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository would be located in thick, partially saturated, fractured volcanic tuff that will be heated to above-boiling temperatures as a result of heat generation from the decay of nuclear waste. Since infiltrating water will be subject to vigorous boiling for a significant time period, the superheated rock zone (i.e., rock temperature above the boiling point of water) can form an effective vaporization barrier that reduces the possibility of water arrival at emplacement drifts. This paper analyzes the behavior of episodic preferential flow events that penetrate the hot fractured rock, evaluate the impact of such flow behavior on the effectiveness of the vaporization barrier, and discuss the implications for the performance assessment of the repository. Our analysis demonstrates that no liquid water is expected to arrive at emplacement drifts during the first several hundred years after waste emplacement, when the rock temperature is high in the drift vicinity and boiling conditions exist in a sufficiently large region above the drifts.