A top-level strategy for postclosure performance assessment of Yucca Mountain
Felton W. Bingham · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society · 1988
In defining the studies needed for characterizing the Yucca Mountain site, the US Department of Energy (DOE) began from the following principle: The data that must be collected are the data that the DOE expects to use in demonstrating compliance with the regulations governing a repository. An early step in defining the studies was therefore the formulation of a strategy for demonstrating this compliance; from that strategy the DOE has derived lists of needed data and plans to provide those data. The complete strategy that the DOE formulated is complex enough to fill hundreds of pages in the Yucca Mountain site-characterization plan. At its highest, least detailed level, however, the strategy rests simply on a few fundamental expectations about the behavior of a repository system at Yucca Mountain. A brief explanation of this top level of the strategy is useful for two reasons: It is a simple example of how the detailed strategy was formulated, and it points out the features of the site on which those fundamental expectations are based.