Thermal Conductivity of Korean Compacted Bentonite Buffer Materials for a Nuclear Waste Repository

Engineered barrier system (EBS) has been proposed for the disposal of high-level waste (HLW). An EBS is composed of a disposal canister with spent fuel, a buffer material, backfill material, and a near field rock mass. The buffer material is especially essential to guarantee the safe disposal of HLW, and plays the very important role of protecting the waste and canister against any external mechanical impact. The buffer material should also possess high thermal conductivity, to release as much decay heat as possible from the spent fuel. Its thermal conductivity is a crucial property since it determines the temperature retained from the decay heat of the spent fuel. Many studies have investigated the thermal conductivity of bentonite buffer materials and many types of soils. However, there has been little research or overall evaluation of the thermal conductivity of Korean Ca-type bentonite buffer materials. This paper investigated and analyzed the thermal conductivity of Korean Ca-type bentonite buffer materials produced in Gyeongju, and compared the results with various characteristics of Na-type bentonites, such as MX80 and Kunigel. Additionally, this paper suggests various predictive models to predict the thermal conductivity of Korean bentonite buffer materials considering various influential independent variables, and compared these with results for MX80 and Kunigel.