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Groundwater Flow and Thermal Modeling to Support a Preferred Conceptual Model for the Large Hydraulic Gradient North of Yucca Mountain

Description: The purpose of this study is to report on the results of a preliminary modeling framework to investigate the causes of the large hydraulic gradient north of Yucca Mountain. This study builds on the Saturated Zone Site-Scale Flow and Transport Model (referenced herein as the Site-scale model (Zyvoloski, 2004a), which is a three-dimensional saturated zone model of the Yucca Mountain area. Groundwater flow was simulated under natural conditions. The model framework and grid design describe the geo… more
Date: December 18, 2007
Creator: McGraw, D. & Oberlander, P.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Seismicity in the Vicinity of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the Period October 1, 2002, to September 30, 2003

Description: Earthquake activity in the Yucca Mountain from October 1, 2002 through September 30, 2003 (FY03) is assessed and compared with previous activity in the region. FY03 is the first reporting year since the 1992 M 5.6 Little Skull Mountain earthquake with no earthquakes greater than M 3.0 within 65 km of Yucca Mountain. In addition, FY03 includes the fewest number of earthquakes greater than M 2.0 in any reporting year since the LSM event. With 3075 earthquakes in the catalog, FY03 represents the s… more
Date: December 4, 2007
Creator: Smith, Ken & von Seggern, David
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Results of Chemical Analyses in Support of Yucca Mountain Studies

Description: Ground water monitoring for the Nye County Early Warning Drilling Program (NCEWDP) was established to monitor underground water sources of the area and to protect communities surrounding the Nevada Test Site (NTS) from potential radionuclide contamination of these water sources. It provides hydrological information pertaining to groundwater flow patterns and recharge issues in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain. The Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies (HRC) obtained groundwater samples from… more
Date: December 11, 2007
Creator: Daniels, Jeanette
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Exceptional Ground Accelerations and Velocities Caused by Earthquakes

Description: This project aims to understand the characteristics of the free-field strong-motion records that have yielded the 100 largest peak accelerations and the 100 largest peak velocities recorded to date. The peak is defined as the maximum magnitude of the acceleration or velocity vector during the strong shaking. This compilation includes 35 records with peak acceleration greater than gravity, and 41 records with peak velocities greater than 100 cm/s. The results represent an estimated 150,000 instr… more
Date: January 17, 2008
Creator: Anderson, John
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Yucca Mountain Climate Technical Support Representative

Description: The primary objective of Project Activity ORD-FY04-012, “Yucca Mountain Climate Technical Support Representative,” was to provide the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) with expertise on past, present, and future climate scenarios and to support the technical elements of the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) climate program. The Climate Technical Support Representative was to explain, defend, and interpret the YMP climate program to the various audiences during Site Recommendati… more
Date: October 23, 2007
Creator: Sharpe, Saxon E.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Measurement of the Parameter Kappa, and Reevaluation of Kappa for Small to Moderate Earthquakes at Seismic Stations in the Vicinity of Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Description: The parameter kappa was defined by Anderson and Hough (1984) to describe the high-frequency spectral roll-off of the strong motion seismic spectrum. In the work of Su et al., (1996) the numerical value of kappa estimated for sites near Yucca Mountain was small (~20 ms). The estimate obtained from these events has been applied through a rigorous methodology to develop design earthquake spectra with magnitude over 5.0. Smaller values of kappa lead to higher estimated ground motions in the methodo… more
Date: December 5, 2007
Creator: Biasi, Glenn & Anderson, John G.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Ground Water Level Measurements in Selected Boreholes Near the Site of the Proposed Repository

Description: The Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies (HRC) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) acquired quarterly and continuous data on water levels from approximately 26 boreholes that comprise a periodic monitoring network (Table 1) between October 2003 and September 2007. During this period we continued to observe and analyze short and long-term ground water level trends in periodically monitored boreholes. In this report we summarize and discuss four key findings derived from analysis… more
Date: November 29, 2007
Creator: Page, H. Scott
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Seismicity in the Vicinity of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the Period October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2006

Description: This report describes earthquake activity within approximately 65 km of Yucca Mountain site during the October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2006 time period (FY05-06). The FY05-06 earthquake activity will be compared with the historical and more recent period of seismic activity in the Yucca Mountain region. The relationship between the distribution of seismicity and active faults, historical patterns of activity, and rates of earthquakes (number of events and their magnitudes) are important compon… more
Date: November 26, 2007
Creator: Smith, Ken
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Final Technical Report: Effects of Changing Water and Nitrogen Inputs on a Mojave Desert Ecosystem

Description: Questions addressed under this grant shared the common hypothesis that plant and ecosystem performance will positively respond to the augmentation of the most limiting resources to plant growth in the Mojave Desert, e.g., water and nitrogen. Specific hypothesis include (1) increased summer rainfall will significantly increase plant production thorugh an alleviation of moisture stress in the dry summer months, (2) N-deposition will increase plan production in this N-limited system, particularly … more
Date: November 30, 2007
Creator: Smith, Stanley D. & Nowak, Robert S.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Effects of Elevated CO2 on Root Function and Soil Respiration in a Mojave Desert Ecosystem

Description: Increases in atmospheric CO{sub 2} concentration during the last 250 years are unequivocal, and CO{sub 2} will continue to increase at least for the next several decades (Houghton et al. 2001, Keeling & Whorf 2002). Arid ecosystems are some of the most important biomes globally on a land surface area basis, are increasing in area at an alarming pace (Dregne 1991), and have a strong coupling with regional climate (Asner & Heidebrecht 2005). These water-limited ecosystems also are predicted to be… more
Date: December 19, 2007
Creator: Nowak, Robert S.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Bomb-Pulse Chlorine-36 at the Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository Horizon: An Investigation of Previous Conflicting Results and Collection of New Data

Description: Previous studies Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) found elevated ratios of chlorine-36 to total chloride (36Cl/Cl) in samples of rock collected from the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) at Yucca Mountain (YM). The data were interpreted as an indication that fluids containing “bomb-pulse” 36Cl reached the repository horizon in the ~50 years since the peak period of above-ground nuclear testing. Due to the significance of 36Cl data to conceptual models of unsaturated zone flow, the United … more
Date: July 31, 2006
Creator: Cizdziel, James
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Precarious Rock Methodology for Seismic Hazard: Physical Testing, Numerical Modeling and Coherence Studies

Description: This report covers the following projects: Shake table tests of precarious rock methodology, field tests of precarious rocks at Yucca Mountain and comparison of the results with PSHA predictions, study of the coherence of the wave field in the ESF, and a limited survey of precarious rocks south of the proposed repository footprint. A series of shake table experiments have been carried out at the University of Nevada, Reno Large Scale Structures Laboratory. The bulk of the experiments involved s… more
Date: September 29, 2006
Creator: Anooshehpoor, Rasool; Purvance, Matthew D.; Brune, James N.; Preston, Leiph A.; Anderson, John G. & Smith, Kenneth D.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Geostatistical and Stochastic Study of Flow and Transport in the Unsaturated Zone at Yucca Mountain

Description: Yucca Mountain has been proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy as the nation’s long-term, permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste. The potential repository would be located in Yucca Mountain’s unsaturated zone (UZ), which acts as a critical natural barrier delaying arrival of radionuclides to the water table. Since radionuclide transport in groundwater can pose serious threats to human health and the environment, it is important to understand how … more
Date: August 14, 2007
Creator: Ye, Ming; Pan, Feng; Hu, Xiaolong & Zhu, Jianting
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Yucca Mountain Area Saturated Zone Dissolved Organic Carbon Isotopic Data

Description: Groundwater samples in the Yucca Mountain area were collected for chemical and isotopic analyses and measurements of water temperature, pH, specific conductivity, and alkalinity were obtained at the well or spring at the time of sampling. For this project, groundwater samples were analyzed for major-ion chemistry, deuterium, oxygen-18, and carbon isotopes of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) performed all the fieldwork on this… more
Date: June 25, 2007
Creator: Thomas, James; Decker, David; Patterson, Gary; Peterman, Zell; Mihevc, Todd; Larsen, Jessica et al.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Second Generation Waste Package Design Study

Description: The following describes the objectives of Project Activity 023 “Second Generation Waste Package Design Study” under DOE Cooperative Agreement DE-FC28-04RW12232. The objectives of this activity are: to review the current YMP baseline environment and establish corrosion testenvironments representative of the range of dry to intermittently wet conditions expected in the drifts as a function of time; to demonstrate the oxidation and corrosion resistance of A588 weathering steel and reference Alloy … more
Date: June 28, 2007
Creator: Armijo, J. S.; Misra, M. & Kar, Piyush
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Influence of Lithophysal Geometry on the Uniaxial Compression of Tuff-Like Rock

Description: A large portion of the rock of the high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain contains lithophysae or voids. These voids have a significant detrimental effect on the engineering properties of the rock mass and its performance. The lithophysae were formed at the time of volcanic deposition by pockets of gas trapped within the compressing and cooling pyroclastic flow material. Lithophysae vary by size, shape, and spatial frequency of occurrence. Due to the difficulties of testing actua… more
Date: June 13, 2007
Creator: Rigby, Douglas B.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Seismicity in the Vicinity of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the Period October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2004

Description: This report describes the seismicity and earthquake monitoring activities within the Yucca Mountain region during fiscal year 2004 (FY2004 - October 1, 2003, through September 30, 2004) based on operation of the Southern Great Basin Digital Seismic Network (SGBDSN). Network practices and earthquake monitoring conducted at the Nevada Seismological Laboratory (NSL) under DOE directives for prior fiscal years are covered in similar yearly reports (see references). Real-time systems, including regi… more
Date: October 15, 2007
Creator: von Seggern, David & Smith, Ken
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Initial Borehole Accelerometer Array Observations Near the North Portal of the ESF

Description: This report addresses observed ground motions at the site of the proposed surface facilities associated with the designated repository for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In 2003 an accelerometer array was installed at three boreholes on the pad of the north portal of the ESF (Exploratory Studies Facility) at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory (NSL). These boreholes, roughly 150 m apart and initially used for extensive geological and geophysical s… more
Date: August 17, 2005
Creator: von Seggern, David
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Investigations of the Fundamental Surface Reactions Involved in the Sorption and Desorption of Radionuclides

Description: Models for describing solution- and surface-phase reactions have been used for 30 years, but only recently applicable to complex surfaces. Duff et al., using micro-XANES, found that Pu was concentrated on Mn-oxide and smectite phases of zeolitic tuff, providing an evaluation of contaminant speciation on surfaces for modeling. Experiments at Los Alamos demonstrated that actinides display varying surface residence time distributions, probably reflective of mineral surface heterogeneity. We propos… more
Date: April 20, 2011
Creator: Czerwinski, Ken; Heske, Clemens; Moser, Duane; Misra, Mnoranjan & McMillion, Glen
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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University of Nevada Las Vegas LED Display Engineering

Description: The primary objective of this part of the project is to develop and implement a method that compensates for the inefficiency of the green LED. The proposed engineering solution which will be the backbone of this project will be to use RGBW combination in every pixel to save energy. Two different RGBW geometrical pixel configurations will be implemented and compared against traditional LED configurations. These configurations will be analyzed for energy efficiency while keeping the quality of th… more
Date: August 31, 2010
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Biotic Processes Regulating the Carbon Balance of Desert Ecosystems - Final Report

Description: Our results from the 10-year elevated atmospheric CO{sub 2} concentration study at the Nevada Desert FACE (Free-air CO{sub 2} Enrichment) Facility (NDFF) indicate that the Mojave Desert is a dynamic ecosystem with the capacity to respond quickly to environmental changes. The Mojave Desert ecosystem is accumulating carbon (C), and over the 10-year experiment, C accumulation was significantly greater under elevated [CO{sub 2}] than under ambient, despite great fluctuations in C inputs from year t… more
Date: December 13, 2012
Creator: Nowak, Robert S; Smith, Stanley D; Evans, Dave; Ogle, Kiona & Fenstermaker, Lynn
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Results of Chemical Analyses for Alcove 8/Niche 3 Tracer Studies

Description: This is the final report detailing the analyses performed under ORD-FY04-011 "Chemical Analyses for Alcove 8/Niche 3 Tracer Studies." The work was performed under the University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN) and the Department of Energy (DOE) Cooperative Agreement Number DE-FC28-04RW12232. This task provided method development and analytical support for the Alcove 8/Niche 3 Tracer Studies in the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF). Concentrations of tracers, as well as major ani… more
Date: February 23, 2006
Creator: Daniels, Jeanette
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Amorphous Alloy Membranes Prepared by Melt-Spin methods for Long-Term use in Hydrogen Separation Applications

Description: Amorphous Ni-based alloy membranes show great promise as inexpensive, hydrogenselective membrane materials. In this study, we developed membranes based on nonprecious Ni-Nb-Zr alloys by adjusting the alloying content and using additives. Several studies on crystallization of the amorphous ribbons, in-situ x-ray diffraction, SEM and TEM, hydrogen permeation, hydrogen solubility, hydrogen deuterium exchange, and electrochemical studies were conducted. An important part of the study was to complet… more
Date: February 28, 2013
Creator: Chandra, Dhanesh; Kim, Sang-Mun; Adibhatla, Anasuya; Dolan, Michael; Paglieri, Steve; Flanagan, Ted et al.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Long-Term Mechanical Behavior of Yucca Mountain Tuff and its Variability, Final Technical Report for Task ORD-FY04-021

Description: The study of the long term mechanical behavior of Yucca Mountain tuffs is important for several reasons. Long term stability of excavations will affect accessibility (e.g. for inspection purposes), and retrievability. Long term instabilities may induce loading of drip shields and/or emplaced waste, thus affecting drip shield and/or waste package corrosion. Failure of excavations will affect airflow, may affect water flow, and may affect temperature distributions. The long term mechanical behavi… more
Date: March 20, 2006
Creator: Daemen, Jaak J. K.; Ma, Lumin & Zhao, Guohua
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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