Consideration of critically when directly disposing highly enriched spent nuclear fuel in unsaturated tuff: Bounding estimates

摘要

This report presents one of 2 approaches (bounding calculations) which were used in a 1994 study to examine the possibility of a criticality in a repository. Bounding probabilities, although rough, point to the difficulty of creating conditions under which a critical mass could be assembled (container corrosion, separation of neutron absorbers from fissile material, collapse or precipitation of fissile material) and how significant the geochemical and hydrologic phenomena are. The study could not conceive of a mechanism consistent with conditions under which an atomic explosion could occur. Should a criticality occur in or near a container in the future, boundary consequence calculations showed that fissions from one critical event (