Performance Analysis of Conceptual Waste Package Designs in Salt Repositories

Abstract

ABSTRACTA performance analysis of commercial high-level waste and spent fuel conceptual package designs in reference repositories in three salt formations was conducted with the WAPPA waste package code. Expected conditions for temperature, stress, brine composition, radiation level, and brine flow rate were used as boundary conditions to compute expected corrosion of a thick-walled overpack of 1025 wrought steel. In all salt formations corrosion by low Mg salt-dissolution brines typical of intrusion scenarios was too slow to cause the package to fail for thousands of years after burial. In high Mg brines judged typical of thermally migrating brines in bedded salt formations, corrosion rates which would otherwise have caused the packages to fail within a few hundred years were limited by brine availability. All of the brine reaching the package was consumed by reaction with the iron in the overpack, thus preventing further corrosion. Uniform brine distribution over the package surface was an important factor in predicting long package lifetimes for the high Mg brines.