Magma flow and interaction with waste packages in a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Abstract

The likelihood that a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain could be intersected by igneous activity is very low, but its potential consequences are nevertheless important to performance assessments. An ongoing critical area of concern is the nature and magnitude of the thermal interaction of magma with tunnel walls, high-level nuclear waste packages, and waste forms. Previous assessments consider a variety of dynamic scenarios, but large uncertainties remain in understanding the rheological nature of the magma likely to be involved and its behavior within a repository drift. Here we specifically address the issue of magma rheology during degassing, cooling, and solidification as basaltic magma approaches Earth's surface and enters a drift. Magma containing significant amounts (> ~ 2 wt.%) of dissolved water (Wet Magma), as is anticipated for this region, at or near its liquidus temperature and saturated with water at 200 MPa is at a temperature near or below the 1-atm solidus temperature. Isentropic ascent from this near liquidus temperature promotes extensive solidification and/or glassification. Exsolving water with approach to the surface promotes rapid vesiculation leading to fragmentation and tephra production. With continued ascent the still water-saturated magma traverses the solidification phase field and undergoes a combination of rapid crystallization and quenching, becoming a glassy highly viscous (~ 10 8 Pa s) mass of greatly reduced mobility. This immobility is reflected in the high effective viscosity regulating flows from nearby cinder cones associated with wet basalt. This also matches well with the experimentally determined rheology of dry basalt glass. This rheology greatly restricts the mobility of basalt within repository drifts, amounting to < 10 m per day. Magma in this state quenches rapidly (~ 10 cm/min) on waste packages. Wet basalt is explosive, but relatively immobile as lava. Dry Magma is not explosive, but highly mobile as lava. Previous studies have tended to use an inconsistent set of mixed magma properties involving both extremes. The net effect of our results is that the portion of a repository hypothetically affected by invading magma is likely to be minimal and the number of waste packages affected may be very small. Moreover, the waste packages and/or waste materials affected will most likely be encased in quenched magma.