Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository

Summary

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress, but the 112th Congress ended federal funding for the site via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011, during the Obama administration. The project has encountered many difficulties and was highly contested by the public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The project also faces strong state and regional opposition. The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety re

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

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Déchets radioactifs: qui veut d'un site d'enfouissement près de chez lui?

Laurent Nicolet

Professor Laloui gave an interview to Migros Magazine. The talk was about nuclear waste storage. As we know, disposal of nuclear waste abroad is forbidden since 2006 and therefore new solutions are being considered. The solution discussed is underground waste storage that could hold up to 100 000 square meters of radioactive waste.

2018

The management of radioactive wastes from the nuclear fuel cycle has become an important issue in the development of future, more sustainable nuclear energy systems. Partitioning and transmutation (P&T) of actinides and some long-lived fission products could reduce the mass and radiotoxicity of highlevel wastes and possibly ease repository licensing requirements. Influenced by political and technological developments, an increasing number of countries employing nuclear power have become interested in P&T technology which involves the development of new types of critical and/or sub-critical reactors and very efficient fuel cycle strategies. The present thesis is closely connected to two P&T related projects of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, a numerical benchmark exercise for an accelerator-driven minor actinides burner and a calculational system study on the role of accelerator-driven systems (ADS) and advanced fast reactors (FR) in advanced nuclear fuel cycles. The author co-coordinated the benchmark exercise and performed the comparative analysis of the different "fuel cycle schemes" investigated in the system study. The benchmark exercise contributed to a greater understanding of the physical phenomena characteristic of the transmutation of actinides in a closed fuel cycle, and allowed to test and improve the tools used for modeling ADSs and corresponding advanced fuel cycles. This work thus effectively led to the development of an efficient and more complete calculational scheme, which has permitted an in-depth and reliable analysis of different transmutation scenarios to be carried out. To quantitatively assess the advantages and drawbacks of transmutation, we considered a limited number of "base" transmutation scenarios which constitute an envelope for various possible transmutation strategies employing fast spectrum systems. We then evaluated, for an equilibrium situation, the main aspects which characterise the different transmutation strategies, such as the nuclear park composition, the mass and toxicity of the waste, the need for natural uranium, the in-pile and out-pile mass inventories and, finally, the fuel cycle requirements. Thus, this study has allowed for the reliable comparison of performances of the three main options in the nuclear waste management, viz. open cycle, recycling of plutonium alone and recycling of all the actinides, as well as an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of ADSs in comparison to advanced critical reactors in the management of minor actinides or transuranics. The last part of the dissertation is dedicated to a phase-out study for two schemes employing either ADSs or critical reactors. It has been shown thereby that advanced systems, optimised for an equilibrium fuel composition, can indeed be used to reduce the inventory of transuranics. A comparison of ADS and FR performances has been made in this context, and the relative benefits of transmutation have been quantified in each case taking into consideration, more realistically, the residual mass inventory after the shutdown of all nuclear installations.

EPFL2003

The Opalinus Clay formation will host geological nuclear waste repositories in Switzerland. It is expected that gas pressure will build-up due to hydrogen production from steel corrosion, jeopardizing the integrity of the engineered barriers. In an in situ experiment located in the Mont Terri Underground Rock Laboratory, we demonstrate that hydrogen is consumed by microorganisms, fuelling a microbial community. Metagenomic binning and metaproteomic analysis of this deep subsurface community reveals a carbon cycle driven by autotrophic hydrogen oxidizers belonging to novel genera. Necromass is then processed by fermenters, followed by complete oxidation to carbon dioxide by heterotrophic sulfate-reducing bacteria, which closes the cycle. This microbial metabolic web can be integrated in the design of geological repositories to reduce pressure build-up. This study shows that Opalinus Clay harbours the potential for chemolithoautotrophic-based system, and provides a model of microbial carbon cycle in deep subsurface environments where hydrogen and sulfate are present.

2016

EPFL2003