Showing papers by "Thomas A. Buscheck published in 1996"

Near-field thermal-hydrological behavior for alternative repository designs at Yucca Mountain

Abstract: three-dimensional calculations that explicitly represent a realistic mixture of waste packages (WPs) are used to analyze decay-heat-driven thermal-hydrological behavior around emplacement drifts in a potential high-level waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Calculations, using the NUFT code, compare two fundamentally different ways that WPs can be arranged in the repository, with a focus on temperature, relative humidity, and liquid-phase flux on WPs. These quantities strongly affect WP integrity and the mobilization and release of radionuclides from WPs. Point-load spacing, which places the WPs roughly equidistant from each other, thermally isolates WPs from each other, causing large variability in temperature, relative humidity, and liquid-phase flux among the drifts. Line-load spacing, which WPs nearly end to end in widely spaced drifts, results in more locally intensive and uniform heating along the drifts, causing hotter, drier and more uniform conditions. A larger and more persistent reduction in relative humidity on WPs occurs if the drifts are backfilled with a low thermal conductivity granular material with hydrologic properties that minimize moisture wicking.