Modeling plutonium solubility for Yucca Mountain performance assessment

摘要

The Yucca Mountain performance assessment requires a Pu solubility model over a broad range of environmental conditions. Several Pu solubility models have been developed and evaluated for the Yucca Mountain Project. These models are 1) the theoretical fo(2) model; 2) the empirical E-h upper limit model; and 3) the adjusted E-h upper limit model. It is found that over the expected environmental conditions, Pu solubility is very sensitive to redox conditions and properly selecting the redox conditions to be modeled is the key to developing a realistic and defensible Pu solubility model. Analyzing the modeling results carefully and using experimental results as benchmarks suggest that the adjusted E-h upper limit model is a realistic and yet defensible model to be used by the PA.