structural design of radioactive waste concrete disposal vaults

structural and radiological requirements for designing radioactive waste concrete disposal vaults were reviewed. besides, the details for functional design are also discussed. the ANSYS software was used for modeling the structure in order to predict the behavior of concrete disposal vaults throughout their long life span which can be as long as 300 year. a parametric study was performed to investigate the effect of important factors on the concrete vaults behavior. these factors include the reinforcement ratio, concrete characteristic strength, length to width ratio and concrete deterioration due to chemical ions attack. the study also compares the results of the three-dimensional model developed here for the concrete underground tank to those of the simplified two-dimensional model, which is routinely used in practice . this comparison helped in determining the conditions at which the results of the two -dimensional model can be accepted for practical design purposes