Yucca Mountain project total-system performance assessment preliminary analyses

This paper reports that Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest Laboratory have produced a coordinated initial total-system performance assessment analysis for the potential repository at Yucca Mountain. Analyses included radionuclide transport via groundwater and gas flow, human intrusion, tectonism, and basaltic igneous intrusion. Both abstracted and detailed calculations were used for the analyses. Probabilistic release distributions were calculated for the individual components, and a combined distribution for the overall behavior of the system was constructed. Results from the analyses using abstracted models indicate that this method produces reasonable outcomes based on the authors' current understanding of the site