Report of the Peer review Panel on the Early Site Suitability Evaluation of the Potential Repository Site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project Office (YMPO) assigned Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the Technical and Management Support Services (T&MSS) contractor to the YMPO, the task of conducting an Early Site Suitability Evaluation (ESSE) of the Yucca Mountain site as a potential site for a high-level radioactive waste repository. First, the assignment called for the development of a method to evaluate a single site against the DOE General Guidelines for Recommendation of Sites for Nuclear Waste Repositories, 10 CFR Part 960. Then, using this method, an evaluation team, the ESSE Core Team, of senior YMP scientists, engineers, and technical experts, evaluated new information obtained about the site since publication of the final Environmental Assessment (DOE, 1986) to determine if new suitability/unsuitability findings could be recommended. The Core Team members are identified in Table 1. Finally, the Core Team identified further information and analyses needed to make final determinations for each of the guidelines. The results of these efforts are contained in a companion document: "The Report of Early Site Suitability Evaluation of the Potential Repository Site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada" (Younker et al., 1992).