Sensitivity analysis and model calibration as a part of the model development process in radioactive waste disposal safety assessment

Abstract

Safety assessment and safety case development require uncertainty management as a key part of the confidence-building process. In application to the numerical modelling, the global sensitivity analysis and model calibration tools are widely employed for dealing with parametric and conceptual uncertainties. Even in the light of the broadly accepted paradigm that the safety assessment in general and the modelling itself are iterative procedures, the models are often treated as a fixed problem. In this paper, we present the illustrations of the concept that the sensitivity analysis and calibration provide significant information for model development, choice, and enhancement. The given examples show that uncertainty management steps are not the final stages of the computational model development, but an inseparable part of the modelling process.