Although they are nearly at the final depth, the work thus far has been primarily to construct the 4-km long access tunnel. The facility is not scheduled to accept the nuclear waste until 2020 but once it does, it will have enough space for about 7 reactor’s worth of spent fuel for 100-years of their operation. That would put final sealing of the facility in 2120. One interesting thing that caught my attention is that according to Posiva, the agency responsible for facility, after 500 years the radiation dose standing next to one of the canisters would be equivalent to a CAT Scan. [Source: hs.fi via Ontario-geofish]
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US Nuclear Regulatory Commission – No. 08-106 – June 3, 2008
NRC RECEIVES DOE’S LICENSE APPLICATION TO CONSTRUCT HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission received an application today from the U.S. Department of Energy for a license to construct the nation’s first geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
“We are ready to get to work on this challenging review,†said NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein. “Congress has given the NRC a strict timetable for reviewing this application, and I want to assure the American people that we will perform an independent, rigorous and thorough examination to determine whether the repository can safely house the nation’s high-level waste. The NRC’s licensing decision will be based entirely on the technical merits.†[Editor] Read on for the rest of the press release [/Editor]