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Historical Relationship Between Performance Assessment for Radioactive Waste Disposal and Other Types of Risk Assessment in the United States

This paper describes the evolution of the process for assessing the hazards of a geologic disposal system for radioactive waste and, similarly, nuclear power reactors, and the relationship of this process with other assessments of risk, particularly assessments of hazards from manufactured carcinogenic chemicals during use and disposal. This perspective reviews the common history of scientific concepts for risk assessment developed to the 1950s.

Geosphere Performance Indices: Comparative measures for site selection and safety assesment of deep waste repositories

The concept of Geosphere Perfonnance Indices (GPis) is proposed. The &quot;performance&quot;<br/>refers to the geosphere&#39;s capacity to retain/contain radionuclides in the event of their accidental<br/>release at some point in time. The GPis are based on the Lagrangian stochastic-analytical<br/>framework for transport in the subsurface and are believed to render useful tools in performance<br/>assessment studies in general and in the site selection process in particular.