Environmental impact of nuclear fuel cycle and application of compartment models

The present paper reports the preliminary results obtained by VR-KHNP code, developed by joint collaboration between UC Berkeley and KHNP. The code has been developed for the LLW repository performance assessment. It can evaluate quantitatively the mass transfer rates from the repository to the far field, and to the biosphere, and the spatial distribution of radionuclide mass, both as a function of time. With the code, the radionuclide migration has been calculated, and the results have been successfully benchmarked against those from SAGE. Effect of repository configuration in relation to the water flow has been investigated. The numerical results show that the effects of water flow direction on the radionuclide release rates to the biosphere are not significant. Based on the mass in the biosphere, the environmental impact of the repository has also been evaluated. The result shows that the impact is significantly smaller than that from HLW repository or from mill tailings and depleted uranium