The US Department of Energy is studying the suitability of Yucca Mountain (YM) as a potential nuclear waste repository site. Environmental conditions are important to engineered barrier system (EBS) design, materials testing, selection, design criteria, waste-form characterization, and performance assessment. Yucca Mountain is located in uninhabited desert which results in an environmental framework (unsaturated conditions, and sorptive properties of the rock materials) that is generally favorable for waste disposal. However, waste package (WP) and engineered barrier system (EBS) design concepts, including materials testing and selection, design criteria development, waste-form characterization, and performance assessments all require a specific and detailed understanding of the environmental conditions that will interact with the WP/EBS. Environmental conditions assessments from a series of laboratory and modeling studies have been conducted which provide the current understanding of the near-field environmental conditions at YM that not only exist now but will exist in the future. Because the environmental conditions can change with time, emphasis of the investigations were on processes and changed (not ambient) conditions.

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is investigating the suitability of Yucca Mountain (YM) as a potential site for the nation's first High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository. This responsibility includes materials testing and selections, design criteria development, waste form characterizations, performance assessments, and Near-Field (NF) environment characterization. These areas of responsibility are interrelated and to a large extent depend on environmental conditions surrounding the EBS components. The focus of this paper is to discuss what is currently known about the NF environment, particularly those aspects whose interaction with EBS components have significant impacts on the performance of the EBS and its ability to contribute to the isolation of radioactive waste. Reference designs and design/processes assumptions are used to evaluate the expected NF environmental conditions. This report will not focus on providing parameter values but rather on the processes that influence those parameters and on the impacts of those parameters on the performance of EBS components. Where values are given, they should be viewed as typical of YM as a whole but not necessarily representative of the actual NF environment conditions that surround the EBS components. 19 refs., 6 figs.

Experts from science, industry, and government discuss the unresolved scientific and technical issues surrounding the Yucca Mountain site as a geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.

The purpose of this environmental impact statement (EIS) is to provide information on potential environmental impacts that could result from a Proposed Action to construct, operate and monitor, and eventually close a geologic repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nevada. The EIS also provides information on potential environmental impacts from an alternative referred to as the No-Action Alternative, under which there would be no development of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain.