Safety Assessment of Alternatives to Shallow Land Burial of Low Level Radioactive Waste. Volume 1. Failure Analysis of Engineered Barriers.

摘要

The need for new disposal capacity for Low Level radioactive Waste (LLW) has led to a re-examination of disposal practices. A number of enhancements and alternatives to traditional shallow land burial have been proposed to meet the need for new capacity and to address various concerns about the performance history of existing commercial LLW sites. There are five major alternative near surface disposal concepts: Above GroundVaults (AGV), Earth Mounded Concrete Bunker tumuli (EMCB), Below Ground Vaults (BGV), Augered Hole (AH) shaft disposal, and mined cavities. The series of steps which make up the hazard analysis require definition of disposal system functions and engineered components. Hazard levels due to component failure are estimated and the importance of the components is ranked. The analysis indicates that the cover component of any near surface disposal system is one of the most important engineered barriers regardless of the presence of other components such as vaults and enhanced containers.