Economic evalutation of nuclear waste underground emplacement concepts

Abstract

An economic evaluation of nuclear waste underground storage facility is presented. The underground storage facility is a subsystem of the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System (CRWMS) currently under development in the United States. The evaluation considers two nuclear waste emplacement concepts for the underground facility: Vertical Borehole Emplacement and In-Drift Emplacement. Since the two concepts are of unequal lives, several cases were established in order to perform an economic comparison. A discussion of the underground facility life-cycle is provided. A detailed description of the assumptions and methodology used for cost estimating, and an analysis of the results is also provided. A complete set of calculations for each case is given in the appendix.