Underground facilities

All plutonium produced must be prevented from spreading into the environment. It is presently believed that the safest way is to store plutonium waste in deep underground facilities, and several such are now being constructed (8, 9, 12, 13). In the future, however, releases of various sizes must be anticipated, considering the large amounts of plutonium being handled. The hazards associated with such releases must be reliably assessed. 

Naik, T.R., Ramme, B.W., and Kolbeck, H.J., Filling abandoned underground facilities with CLSM fly ash slurry, Concrete International, 12 (7), 19-25, July 1990. 

Contact-handled TRU waste disposal will occupy a horizon about 2,100 feet deep while experiments with HLW and all heat producing TRU will be emplaced in a purer salt horizon 2,600 feet below the surface. WIPP II would require a smaller surface and underground facility since the large volume of existing defense HLW need not be accommodated. The... 

Solution Although nc and Mwa (and thus met) are invariant and remain precisely determined, slight differences in temperature or pressure at the underground facility will cause slight variations of Vsoin, thus altering the molarity cet of a sealed container. Such extraneous dependence makes molarity an unsatisfactory concentration unit for quantitative physical chemistry purposes. 

Perpetual institutional control over near-surface disposal sites also is envisioned for uranium mill tailings, on account of the unacceptably high risks that could result if tailings piles were released from control and the view that disposal of the very large volumes of these wastes in underground facilities is not feasible (EPA, 1982 ... 

Figure 5.98. Hourly level of hydrogen stored in the two central underground facilities (top) and hydrogen production (lower part of figure) in the centralised 2050 renewable energy scenario for Denmark (Sorensen et ah, 2004).

Boom Clay formation, which extends over a large part of North Europe, has been extensively investigated (Beer et al. (1977), Horseman et al. (1987), Baldi et al. (1991), Sultan (1997), Romero Morales (1999)). Specimens in this study come from Mol in Belgium where underground facilities exist. They have been taken at 223 m depth in a 100 m average thickness formation. The in situ stress state is slightly anisotropic (Ko = 0.9). 

A national campaign to enhance safety, environmental protection, and service reliability by reducing underground facility damage. This damage prevention education... 

Examples of external events which are not expected, but which could occur and impair tiie fecility are flooding, earthquake and water intrusion. The access to an underground facility must evidently be protected against surface floods. It is sensible to design the surface and underground constructions against an earthquake with a expected frequency of 10 or even per year. 

In some cases, external corrosion of buried structures can be eliminated by installing these structures above grade, rather than bur5dng them. This has become common practice in plants, where space is available to relocate the underground facilities to above ground. This practice results in elimination of the invisible corrosion of the formerly buried structures, and replacement with a condition in which the structure can be seen and maintained. However, there... 

Evaluation of long-term safety assessments based on model predictions is difficult. While it is possible to evaluate the accuracy of a model by comparing the results with experiments on radionuclide migration behavior in underground facilities, such underground experiments are typically short-term (up to several years) investigations. 

There are a variety of underground facilities that could afiea the positioning of equipment. Depending on... 

The most common form of nuclear waste is spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. These fuel rods can be contained above the ground by placing them in water pools or in dry casks. Each nuclear reactor in the United States has large pools of water where spent rods can be stored, and some of the radioactive materials will decay. When these pools are full, the rods are moved to dry casks, which are usually made of concrete and steel. Both storage pools and casks are meant for only temporary storage before moving the waste to permanent underground facilities. 

American Underground Construction Association http //www.auca.org (accessed June 15, 2010). This organization is involved in all aspects of underground facilities planning, design, development, construction, and use. 

Check-in/check-out. The employer shall maintain a check-in/check-out procedure that will ensure that aboveground personnel can determine an accurate count of the number of persons underground in the event of an emergency. However, this procedure is not required when the construction of underground facilities designed for human occupancy has been sufficiently completed so that the permanent environmental hazard or structural failure within the facilities has been accounted for. 

Samples for analysis are usually obtained by scraping accessible surfaces. In open systems or on external surface of pipelines or other underground facilities this can be done directly. For low pressure water systems, bull plugs, coupons or inspection ports can provide a way to expose specimens representative of internal surfaces [15], However, more sophisticated devices are required for pressurized systems to allow mounting an assembly on a standard pressure fitting [16]. 

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