Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

In design of a deep geological repository for the high level wastes, it is very important that the temperature of the bentonite block should not be over 100 oC to maintain the integrity of the bentonite buffer block from the decay heat. In this study, for the layout of the repository to meet the requirement, the analysis of the disposal tunnel and disposal pit spacing was carried out. To do this, based on the reference repository concept, several cases of cooling times and disposal tunnel and disposal pit spacing were compared. The thermal stabilities of the disposal systems were analyzed in terms of the cooling time and spacing. The results showed that it was more desirable to determine the layout of the repository in terms of disposal pit spacing than the disposal tunnel spacing. The results of these analyses can be used in the deep geological repository design. The detailed analyses with the exact site characteristics data will reduce the uncertainty of the results.

Keywords

Spent Fuel,HLW,Deep Geological Disposal,Repository Layout,Buffer Block,Thermal Stability,Disposal Tunnel/Disposal Pit Spacing