Understanding the Containment and Isolation Potential of Yucca Mountain; The Coupled Non-Equilibrium Dynamical Systems
Cód:
491_9781683487234
The book is concerned with the geology and hydrogeology of Yucca Mountain, a potential site to host an underground repository intended for the irretrievable long-term containment and isolation from the biosphere of 70 000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. This amount represents the 2012 accumulation of both the spent fuel from more than one hundred commercial reactors in the U.S. and the high-level radioactive waste from defense (military) programs. This book is intended for the wide dissemination of scientific information pertaining to the actual containment and isolation potential of the Yucca Mountain site amongst earth scientists, decision-makers, and the lay public. Hopefully, it will foster a strong, factual and therefore rational foundation for the decision making process. The book demonstrates that a multitude of indisputable lines of evidence, derived from the results of both the various geophysical measurements and the extensive analyses of the local geological record, indicate this mountain is situated in a region profoundly affected by the isostatically uncompensated (rising) and supra solidus (melting) sub-lithosphere mantle. This mantle acts therefore as a practically inexhaustible source of energy (potential gravitational, strain, and thermal) and matter (gaseous phases and basalt magma) being introduced into the corresponding geological system. As a consequence of that, it has the direct effect of causing long-term evolution of this system to proceed with the involvement of sequent evolutionary loops, each consisting of a long period of accumulations of various forms of energy and matter followed by a fairly brief period of releasing the accumulated energy and matter. It is in this manner that Yucca Mountain inevitably, at times, becomes what it actually represents: a mountain underlain by a steadily maturing thermodynamic “bomb”. Although innate forms of this release evolve, the essential character remains the same in that it amoun
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