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The surface facilities at Yucca Mountain will include several specialized
buildings, such as these shown in an artist's 3-D
conception (click the image to enlarge).
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The nuclear
waste handling facilities at the Yucca
Mountain site would consist of a number
of buildings, each with specific waste
handling and processing capabilities.
Under current planning, the first three waste handling facilities to be operational are the Initial Handling Facility, Canister Receipt and Closure Facility, and the Wet Handling Facility. With these facilities the project can handle all forms of waste scheduled for disposal at Yucca Mountain when operations start.
The IHF is one of three waste handling buildings designed to transfer and prepare canisters for disposal. It will take about two-and-a-half years to build.
Non-nuclear support facilities, including warehouses, maintenance shops, and security buildings, will compliment the nuclear waste handling facilities.
Buildings at
the site are designed with safety
features used in other nuclear industry
facilities to protect against standard
hazards such as tornadoes, fires,
and earthquakes.
Currently, the suite of nuclear facilities includes:
- Receipt
Facility – At the
receipt facility, waste canisters
are removed from the transportation
casks and prepared for transfer to
the appropriate waste handling facility.
This facility also prepares unloaded
transportation casks and railcars
for return to the National Transportation
System for continued use.
- Initial
Handling Facility – As the first building scheduled for completion, the IHF would prepare high-level radioactive waste from government facilities and spent nuclear fuel from the U.S. Navy for disposal.
- Canister
Receipt and Closure Facilities – The
Canister Receipt and Closure Facility
would receive all disposable canisters,
except for naval spent nuclear fuel
canisters, and prepare them for disposal.
The facilities
would be built in phases.
- Wet Handling
Facility – A small percentage of spent nuclear fuel will not arrive at the repository in TADs, but will be shipped in transportation casks designed to handle individual assemblies of spent fuel rods. The
Wet Handling Facility includes
a pool of water in which spent
fuel rods are removed from
transportation casks, placed into
TAD canisters and prepared for
disposal or aging.
Some of the waste canisters that arrive at Yucca Mountain will need to cool off – age - before going into the repository. When these canisters arrive, they are removed from the transportation casks and placed in special aging casks.
The aging casks are moved to the aging pads located near the waste handling facilities. After the canisters cool to within acceptable levels, the aging cask is transported back to the waste handling facilities, where the canister is removed and prepared for emplacement in the underground.
Last reviewed: 03/08
Repository Engineering and Design Overview:
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