Heater Test Facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, location of a potential nuclear waste geologic repository (1997). This heater test was one of many DECOVALEX modeling test cases in past project phases.
Energy Geosciences Division Director Jens Birkholzer was recently named the Chairman of the DECOVALEX Project, which is an international research and model comparison collaboration, consisting of a number of nuclear waste management organizations and regulatory authorities with several contributing research teams.
DECOVALEX which stands for DEvelopment of COupled models and their VALidation against EXperiments, has played a key role for over 20 years in the development of coupled thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM), and thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (THMC), models of geosystems and their applications to deep geological disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Starting in the Spring of 2016, Berkeley Lab will serve as the coordinating organization for the upcoming DECOVALEX project phase, which will run through 2019. There will be new and exciting modeling test cases that will support ongoing development of numerical THM and THMC simulators and comparison of model results with field and laboratory data. The scope of DECOVALEX also includes developing an understanding performance and safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories, and designing new experiments to support code and modeling developments.
For more info about DECOVALEX project, publications and the impact it has made over the past 20+ years, go to: http://www.decovalex.org/