Risk-informing decisions about high-level nuclear waste repositories

Performance assessments (PAs) are important sources of information for societal decisions in high-level radioactive waste (HLW) management, particularly in evaluating safety cases for proposed HLW repository development. Assessing risk from geologic repositories for HLW poses a significant challenge due to the uncertainties in modeling complex systems of such large temporal and spatial scales. Because of the extensive uncertainties, a typical safety case for a proposed HLW repository is comprised of PA results coupled with various defense-in-depth elements, such as the multi-barrier requirement for repository design, and insights from supplementary analyses. This thesis proposes an additional supplementary analysis, the Strategic Partitioning of Assumption Ranges and Consequences (SPARC), that could be used: (1) in a safety case to help build confidence in a repository system, (2) to provide risk information for decisions on how to allocate resources for future research, and (3) to provide risk information for stakeholder deliberation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Ghosh, Suchandra Tina, 1973-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• George E. Apostolakis.

• Nuclear Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33643

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33643