Characterization Report for the 92-Acre Area of the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site, Nevada Test Site, Nevada

The U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office manages two low-level Radioactive Waste Management Sites at the Nevada Test Site. The Area 5 RWMS uses engineered shallow-land burial cells to dispose of packaged waste. This report summarizes characterization and monitoring work pertinent to the 92-Acre Area in the southeast part of the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Sites. The decades of characterization and assessment work at the Area 5 RWMS indicate that the access controls, waste operation practices, site design, final cover design, site setting, and arid natural environment contribute to a containment system that meets regulatory requirements and performance objectives for the short- and long-term protection of the environment and public. The available characterization and Performance Assessment information is adequate to support design of the final cover and development of closure plans. No further characterization is warranted to demonstrate regulatory compliance. U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office is proceeding with the development of closure plans for the six closure units of the 92-Acre Area

Evolution of the Unsaturated Zone Testing at Yucca Mountain

The evaluation of the Yucca Mountain site has evolved from intensive surface based investigations in the early 1980s to current focus on testing in underground drifts. Different periods of site-characterization activities and prominent issues concerning the unsaturated zone are summarized. Data-collection activities have evolved from mapping of faults and fractures, to estimation of percolation through tuff layers, and to quantification of seepage into drifts. Evaluation of discrete flow paths in drifts has led to fracture-matrix interaction and matrix diffusion tests over different scales. The effects of tuff interfaces and local faults are evaluated in fractured-welded and porous-nonwelded units. Mobilization of matrix water and redistribution of moisture are measured in thermal tests. Lessons learned from underground tests are used to focus on processes needed for additional quantification. Migration through the drift shadow zone and liquid flow through faults are two important issues that have evolved from current knowledge

Appraisal of nuclear waste isolation in the vadose zone in arid and semiarid regions (with emphasis on the Nevada Test Site)

An appraisal was made of the concept of isolating high-level radioactive waste in the vadose zone of alluvial-filled valleys and tuffaceous rocks of the Basin and Range geomorphic province. Principal attributes of these terranes are: (1) low population density, (2) low moisture influx, (3) a deep water table, (4) the presence of sorptive rocks, and (5) relative ease of construction. Concerns about heat effects of waste on unsaturated rocks of relatively low thermal conductivity are considered. Calculations show that a standard 2000-acre repository with a thermal loading of 40 kW/acre in partially saturated alluvium or tuff would experience an average temperature rise of less than 100{sup 0}C above the initial temperature. The actual maximum temperature would depend strongly on the emplacement geometry. Concerns about seismicity, volcanism, and future climatic change are also mitigated. The conclusion reached in this appraisal is that unsaturated zones in alluvium and tuff of arid regions should be investigated as comprehensively as other geologic settings considered to be potential repository sites

TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT NO. 1: CLIMATE AND INFILTRATION

For the past 20 years, extensive field, laboratory, and modeling investigations have been performed at Yucca Mountain, which have led to the development of a number of conceptual models of infiltration and climate for the Yucca Mountain region around the repository site (Flint, A.L. et al. 2001; Wang and Bodvarsson 2003). Evaluating the amount of infiltrating water entering the subsurface is important, because this water may affect the percolation flux, which, in turn, controls seepage into the waste emplacement drifts and radionuclide transport from the repository to the water table. Forecasting of climatic data indicates that during the next 10,000 years at Yucca Mountain, the present-day climate should persist for 400 to 600 years, followed by a warmer and much wetter monsoon climate for 900 to 1,400 years, and by a cooler and wetter glacial-transition climate for the remaining 8,000 to 8,700 years. The analysis of climatic forecasting indicates that long-term climate conditions are generally predictable from a past climate sequence, while short-term climate conditions and weather predictions may be more variable and uncertain. The use of past climate sequences to bound future climate sequences involves several types of uncertainties, such as (1) uncertainty in the timing of future climate, (2) uncertainty in the methodology of climatic forecasting, and (3) uncertainty in the earth's future physical processes. Some of the uncertainties of the climatic forecasting are epistemic (reducible) and aleatoric (irreducible). Because of the size of the model domain, INFIL treats many flow processes in a simplified manner. For example, uptake of water by roots occurs according to the ''distributed model'', in which available water in each soil layer is withdrawn in proportion to the root density in that layer, multiplied by the total evapotranspirative demand. Runoff is calculated simply as the excess of precipitation over a sum of infiltration and water storage in the root zone. More significantly, water movement throughout the soil profile is treated according to the bucket model, in which the amount of water that moves down from one layer to the next is equal to the mass of water in excess of field capacity in the upper layer. The development of a numerical model of infiltration involves a number of abstractions and simplifications to represent the complexity of environmental conditions at Yucca Mountain, such as the arid climate, mountain-type topography, heterogeneous soils and fractured rock, and irregular soil-rock interface

Independent Review of Simulation of Net Infiltration for Present-Day and Potential Future Climates

The DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) tasked Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) with providing an independent expert review of the documented model and prediction results for net infiltration of water into the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain. The specific purpose of the model, as documented in the report MDL-NBS-HS-000023, Rev. 01, is “to provide a spatial representation, including epistemic and aleatory uncertainty, of the predicted mean annual net infiltration at the Yucca Mountain site ...” (p. 1-1) The expert review panel assembled by ORISE concluded that the model report does not provide a technically credible spatial representation of net infiltration at Yucca Mountain. Specifically, the ORISE Review Panel found that: • A critical lack of site-specific meteorological, surface, and subsurface information prevents verification of (i) the net infiltration estimates, (ii) the uncertainty estimates of parameters caused by their spatial variability, and (iii) the assumptions used by the modelers (ranges and distributions) for the characterization of parameters. The paucity of site-specific data used by the modeling team for model implementation and validation is a major deficiency in this effort. • The model does not incorporate at least one potentially important hydrologic process. Subsurface lateral flow is not accounted for by the model, and the assumption that the effect of subsurface lateral flow is negligible is not adequately justified. This issue is especially critical for the wetter climate periods. This omission may be one reason the model results appear to underestimate net infiltration beneath wash environments and therefore imprecisely represent the spatial variability of net infiltration. • While the model uses assumptions consistently, such as uniform soil depths and a constant vegetation rooting depth, such assumptions may not be appropriate for this net infiltration simulation because they oversimplify a complex landscape and associated hydrologic processes, especially since the model assumptions have not been adequately corroborated by field and laboratory observations at Yucca Mountain

Climatic Forecasting of Net Infiltration at Yucca Montain Using Analogue Meteororological Data

At Yucca Mountain, Nevada, future changes in climatic conditions will most likely alter net infiltration, or the drainage below the bottom of the evapotranspiration zone within the soil profile or flow across the interface between soil and the densely welded part of the Tiva Canyon Tuff. The objectives of this paper are to: (a) develop a semi-empirical model and forecast average net infiltration rates, using the limited meteorological data from analogue meteorological stations, for interglacial (present day), and future monsoon, glacial transition, and glacial climates over the Yucca Mountain region, and (b) corroborate the computed net-infiltration rates by comparing them with the empirically and numerically determined groundwater recharge and percolation rates through the unsaturated zone from published data. In this paper, the author presents an approach for calculations of net infiltration, aridity, and precipitation-effectiveness indices, using a modified Budyko's water-balance model, with reference-surface potential evapotranspiration determined from the radiation-based Penman (1948) formula. Results of calculations show that net infiltration rates are expected to generally increase from the present-day climate to monsoon climate, to glacial transition climate, and then to the glacial climate. The forecasting results indicate the overlap between the ranges of net infiltration for different climates. For example, the mean glacial net-infiltration rate corresponds to the upper-bound glacial transition net infiltration, and the lower-bound glacial net infiltration corresponds to the glacial transition mean net infiltration. Forecasting of net infiltration for different climate states is subject to numerous uncertainties-associated with selecting climate analogue sites, using relatively short analogue meteorological records, neglecting the effects of vegetation and surface runoff and runon on a local scale, as well as possible anthropogenic climate changes