Seismic design of the waste-handling building at the prospective Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository

The site for the first prospective high-level nuclear waste repository is located in Yucca Mountain at the southwest corner of the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada. The preliminary site investigation and seismic hazard evaluation indicate that the design ground acceleration in the horizontal direction of 0.40 g (with a vertical acceleration equal to two-thirds the horizontal) has a recurrence interval of 2,000 years. The site evaluation also indicates a potential for some fault displacement on the geologic faults near the site. Proposed facilities at the prospective repository include a waste handling building (WHB), the primary facility used for handling radioactive waste materials. This paper summarizes the structural behavior of the WHB resulting from the seismic loads. This summary includes a preliminary seismic evaluation of the WHB, and includes estimates of the seismic design margin, building performance, and the amount of fault displacement that the WHB can accommodate without structural yield failure