§197.30. What standards must DOE meet? — Inbound Citations

(2) Sections 197.25(b)(1), 197.25(b)(2), and 197.30 of this subpart, if performance assessment is used to demonstrate compliance with either or both of these sections.

(a) It is the volume of ground water that would be withdrawn annually from an aquifer containing less than 10,000 milligrams of total dissolved solids per liter of water to supply a given water demand. The DOE must project the concentration of radionuclides released from the Yucca Mountain disposal system that will be in the representative volume. The DOE must then use the projected concentrations to demonstrate a reasonable expectation to NRC that the Yucca Mountain disposal system complies with § 197.30. The DOE must make the following assumptions concerning the representative volume:

(1) It includes the highest concentration level in the plume of contamination in the accessible environment;

(2) Its position and dimensions in the aquifer are determined using average hydrologic characteristics which have cautious, but reasonable, values representative of the aquifers along the radionuclide migration path from the Yucca Mountain repository to the accessible environment as determined by site characterization; and

(1) The DOE's performance assessments conducted to show compliance with §§ 197.20(a)(1), 197.25(b)(1), and 197.30 shall not include consideration of very unlikely features, events, or processes, i.e., those that are estimated to have less than one chance in 100,000,000 per year of occurring. Features, events, and processes with a higher chance of occurring shall be considered for use in performance assessments conducted to show compliance with §§ 197.20(a)(1), 197.25(b)(1), and 197.30, except as stipulated in paragraph (b) of this section. In addition, unless otherwise specified in these standards or NRC regulations, DOE's performance assessments need not evaluate the impacts resulting from features, events, and processes or sequences of events and processes with a higher chance of occurring if the results of the performance assessments would not be changed significantly in the initial 10,000-year period after disposal.