DEVELOPING AN ADVANCED SIMULATION CAPABILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

Critical investments were made in many areas during the course of developing a safety case and License Application for the Yucca Mountain Project, and these investments are likely to endure beyond the Project itself. An example of an activity catalyzed by these investments is the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s (DOE-EM) Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM) project. ASCEM is a state-of-the-art scientific tool and approach for integrating data and scientific understanding to enable prediction of contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. The ASCEM modeling initiative is developing an open-source, High Performance Computing (HPC) modeling system and user interface analytical platform supporting model setup, parameter estimation, data management, visualization, and uncertainty quantification activities. The ASCEM toolset also includes the next generation of performance assessment tools to better understand the risks of nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning of nuclear facilities across the EM complex. The initiative leverages the considerable scientific investment that has already been made both within and outside of DOE-EM, including within the Yucca Mountain Project, in the areas of subsurface geosciences, modeling and simulation, and environmental remediation. Through integration of these efforts, ASCEM will facilitate the rapid development of more accurate site models, allow for predictive simulation of proposed remediation methods, and prevent implementation of overly conservative and unnecessarily expensive remediation strategies. It is likely that ASCEM can become an effective platform for applications beyond DOE-EM, including the next generation of process and PA models for nuclear waste repositories. In this way, the original investments in the Yucca Mountain models can “come full circle” to provide an advanced repository modeling capability for the future.