COMPUTATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF A SYSTEMS PRIORITIZATION METHODOLOGY FOR THE WASTE ISOLATION PILOT-PLANT - A PRELIMINARY EXAMPLE

A systems prioritization methodology (SPM) is under development for th e Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The SPM is based on a large nume rical integration problem that must be repeatedly evaluated to determi ne compliance probabilities associated with different experimental pro grams and design modifications. Due to the complexity and computationa l cost of the underlying integration problem, the implementation of th e SPM must be planned very carefully. This presentation describes a pr eliminary application of the SPM, designated SPM-1, performed to provi de insights to facilitate the development and implementation of the me thodology. Topics illustrated by SPM-1 include definition of probabili ty spaces on which the SPM is based, use of Latin hypercube sampling a nd simple random sampling to integrate over different probability spac es, selection of mechanistic calculations to be performed, efficient u se of the limited number of mechanistic calculations that can be perfo rmed, and assembly of many individual calculations into a complete ana lysis. Published by Elsevier Science Limited.