Sealing of a Deep Horizontal Borehole Repository for Nuclear Waste

The depth and layout of a horizontal borehole repository has the potential to offer strong isolation of nuclear waste from the surface. However, the isolation may be compromised by the borehole used to access the repository, as it could provide a direct fast-flow path transporting radionuclides from the disposal section to the accessible environment. Thus, backfilling the disposal section and sealing the access hole are considered essential engineered safety components. To analyze the importance of plugging the open space between canisters and sealing the access hole, we numerically calculate non-isothermal fluid flow and radionuclide transport through the borehole and the surrounding geosphere for a variety of scenarios, which include backfill materials with different sealing properties and configurations that potentially induce strong driving forces along both the horizontal and vertical sections of the borehole. The simulations indicate that the dose contribution of radionuclides released through the access hole is small, even if the backfill material is of poor quality or has deteriorated, and even if considerable horizontal and vertical pressure gradients are imposed by assuming the underlying formation is overpressured and that the disposal section is intersected by faults activated during a seismic event. The modeling also reveals that the low influence of backfill integrity on repository performance partly arises from the very high length-to-diameter ratio of the borehole, which favors the radial diffusion of radionuclides—as well as pressure dissipation and associated advective transport—into the surrounding formation rather than axial transport along the borehole. The integrated modeling approach also exposes the importance of accounting for the connections and feedback mechanisms among the various subcomponents of the repository system.