17 – Treatment of uncertainty in performance assessments for the geological disposal of radioactive waste

: The treatment of uncertainty in performance assessments for the geological disposal of radioactive waste is discussed and illustrated. The following topics are considered: (1) the conceptual design and structure of a performance assessment including the separation of aleatory and epistemic uncertainty, (2) the numerical propagation of uncertainty, (3) the computational design of a performance assessment, and (4) sampling-based methods for sensitivity analysis. The presented concepts and techniques are illustrated with results from the 2008 performance assessment for the proposed repository for high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

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