YUCCA YUCCA YUCCA

Hi Radsafe Types (Greetings and Salutations),

This is from: jpreisig@aol.com .

This message contains many gross simplifications and assumptions.

Most people in Las Vegas probably have almost zero education in the

areas of Rad. Health, Groundwater Transport, etc. They are probably not

comfortable (At All) with radionuclides being stored 10 miles away or

100 miles away.

Most radionuclides at Yucca mountain will probably move only tens of

feet in a million years, even without some man-made barriers. Notable

radionuclide exceptions include: Tritium, C-14, Tc-99 (not metastable),

I-129 and Np-237. There may be other radionuclides that transport well

with water. Yucca Mountain is arid, no??? Not much water/rain, then not

much transport of radionuclides. If there are linked fractures around Yucca

mountain, then radionuclides will transport better. If the man-made barriers

hold up for 100 years, then tritium is no longer a problem (relatively

short half-life).

Another problem with Yucca mountain (I'll bet) is finding computer

codes

that can model a time period of 1 million years or longer. One probably has

to have a fairly long time-step in these calculations, and then have many

such

time steps, thus resulting in long computer calculations. Sounds like a

job for Femwater/Femwaste or more recent codes, or whatever DOE/NRC/EPA

requires. More recent computer codes like LEWATER/LEWASTE may

get around the time-step problems. LEWATER/LEWASTE are codes

resulting from the work of Dr. Gour-Tesh Yeh of Penn State University.

He occasionally gives short course on these computer codes.

I don't know much about the hydrogeology of the area, so I won't say

much about this. If the temperatures around Yucca mountain get too much

hotter than room temperature, or too much colder than room temperature,

there probably won't be too many people around Yucca Mountain

anyway.

Have a good weekend!!!! J.R. Preisig, Ph.D.

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