Abstraction of mechanistic sorption model results for performance assessment calculations at Yucca Mountain,Nevada

Sorption onto minerals in the geologic setting may help to mitigate potential radionuclide transport from the proposed high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain (YM), Nevada. An approach is developed for including aspects of more mechanistic sorption models into current probabilistic performance assessment (PA) calculations. Data on water chemistry from the vicinity of YM are screened and used to calculate the ranges in parameters that could exert control on radionuclide sorption behavior. Using a diffuse-layer surface complexation model, sorption parameters for Np(V) and U(VI) are calculated based on the chemistry of each water sample. Model results suggest that lognormal probability distribution functions (PDFs) of sorption parameters are appropriate for most of the samples, but the calculated range is almost five orders of magnitude for Np(V) sorption and nine orders of magnitude for U(VI) sorption. Calculated sorption parameters may also vary at a single sample location by almost a factor of 10 over time periods of the order of days to years due to changes in chemistry, although sampling and analytical methodologies may introduce artifacts that add uncertainty to the evaluation of these fluctuations. Finally, correlation coefficients between the calculated Np(V) and U(VI) sorption parameters can be included as input into PA sampling routines, so that the value selected for one radionuclide sorption parameter is conditioned by its statistical relationship to the others. The approaches outlined here can be adapted readily to current PA efforts, using site-specific information to provide geochemical constraints on PDFs for radionuclide transport parameters.