AbstractThis paper describes an approach for assessing the geosphere performance of nuclear waste disposal in fractured rock. In this approach, a three-dimensional heterogeneous channelnetwork model is constructed using a stochastic discrete fracture network (DFN) code. Radionuclide migration in the channel-network model is solved using the Laplace transform Galerkin finite element method, taking into account advection-dispersion in a fracture network, matrix diffusion, sorption in the rock matrix as well as radioactive chain decay. Preliminary radionuclide migration analysis was performed for fifty realizations of a synthetic block-scale DFN model. The total radionuclide release from all packages in the repository was estimated from the statistics of the results of fifty realizations under the hypothesis of ergodicity. The interpretation of the result of the three-dimensional network model by a combination of simpler one-dimensional parallel plate models is also discussed.
