Isolation capability of a salt dome utilized for high-level waste disposal

It can be concluded that a high isolation capability of a salt dome that is to be used for nuclear waste disposal will be dependant of the following prerequisites: the salt dome should have its top rock salt at about 200 m depth or more, should be sufficiently large in its dimensions and should have clearly reached its post-diapiric stage; the repository is to be developed carefully at greater depth and leaving a large isolation shield of at least 200 m thickness over and around the emplaced waste; and the abandonment and closure of the repository and the two shaft constructions is to be done carefully too. The conclusion then is that the only phenomenon that could be considered realistic in creating a future breach in the isolation shield will be a continuous subrosion process. Its low dissolutioning rate in the order of one meter every 100,000 years to one meter every million years is a good yardstick for the high isolation capability of the salt dome. The prediction then is that if the prerequisites can be fullfilled the isolation capability will fall outside the scale of human chronology and approach infinity