Abstract
AbstractThe extended timescales involved in the decay of radioactive wastes to safe levels mean that geological disposal facilities must continue to function effectively long into the future. It is therefore essential to consider long-term climate evolution in post-closure performance assessments in order to evaluate a geological disposal system's response and robustness to a variety of potential environmental changes, driven by both natural and anthropogenic forcings. In this paper, we illustrate the multiple decay components that characterize the primary driver of climate change – atmospheric CO2 – in response to fossil fuel carbon emissions. We perform a multi-exponential analysis on a series of atmospheric CO2 decay curves predicted by an Earth system model and create an empirical response function that encapsulates the long-term (>1 kyr) removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. We present this response function as a simple tool for rapidly projecting the future atmospheric CO2 concentration resulting from any plausible cumulative release of CO2. We discuss the implications of the long 'tail' to this atmospheric CO2 decay curve, both in terms of future climate evolution as well as potential impacts on radioactive waste repositories.
Highlights
THE significant timescales involved in the decay to safe levels of radionuclides incorporated in radioactive wastes means that geological disposal facilities containing low- and intermediate-level wastes must continue to function effectively for up to 100,000 years, as in the case of the Low Level
This paper focuses on the range of processes that comprise the long-term carbon cycle and how they affect atmospheric CO2, and presents a simple empirical representation of the decay of an atmospheric CO2 perturbation
The decay of an atmospheric CO2 perturbation, and the long-term carbon cycle processes, can be captured in the form of an empirical function comprising a series of exponential decay curves, fitted to a composite CO2 decay curve that is generated by means of a mechanistic numerical model
Summary
THE significant timescales involved in the decay to safe levels of radionuclides incorporated in radioactive wastes means that geological disposal facilities containing low- and intermediate-level wastes must continue to function effectively for up to 100,000 years, as in the case of the Low LevelWaste Repository (LLWR) in the UK (LLWR, 2011). It is essential to consider long-term climate evolution in post-closure performance assessments in order to evaluate a geological disposal system’s response to and robustness against a variety of potential environmental changes, driven by both natural (e.g. orbital variations) and anthropogenic (e.g. fossil fuel emissions) forcings.
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