THE EVEREST PROJECT - SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF GEOLOGICAL DISPOSAL SYSTEMS

The main objective of the EVEREST project is the evaluation of the sen sitivity of the radiological consequences associated with the geologic al disposal of radioactive waste to the different elements in the perf ormance assessment. Three types of geological host formations are cons idered: clay, granite and salt. The sensitivity studies that have been carried out can be partitioned into three categories according to the type of uncertainty taken into account: uncertainty in the model para meters, uncertainty in the conceptual models and uncertainty in the co nsidered scenarios. Deterministic as well as stochastic calculational approaches have been applied for the sensitivity analyses. For the ana lysis of the sensitivity to parameter values, the reference technique, which has been applied in many evaluations, is stochastic and consist s of a Monte Carlo simulation followed by a linear regression. For the analysis of conceptual model uncertainty, deterministic and stochasti c approaches have been used. For the analysis of uncertainty in the co nsidered scenarios, mainly deterministic approaches have been applied. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Limited.