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How will the facility be designed?

While the facility design has changed significantly over the years and is likely to further change before the final facility is built, there will remain four basic steps for the construction.

A diagram showing the four major steps of the disposal process and site design. Source

The first step will be to transport the waste to Yucca Mountain, mostly via rail (further discussed in the transportation section of this website).

The waste will be received in the above ground facility (step 2) which will consist of 29 surface buildings with 800,000 square feet of floor space and will be filled with 600 surface personnel⁷. There the waste will be removed from the shipping containers and placed into the permanent disposal containers via a remote system. These containers are made of an inner layer of stainless steel and an outer layer of a corrosion-resistant metal alloy.

A tunnel in Yucca Mountain Source

The third step will be to move these waste packages, via railcars, into the 100 miles of subsurface tunnels. The moving system will be robotic and operated remotely due to the intense heat of the nuclear packages and the potential risks of exposure

The final resting place (step 4) of the waste canisters will be 1000 feet (300 m) below the ground, end to end, in a large system of underground parallel drifts⁸. The design will rely on both natural and engineered barriers to protect the waste and manage the heat that will be generated.

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