ABSTRACT
This process may take many thousands of years, but the nuclear waste will retain some of its radioactivity for more than a million years. Once the groundwater is contaminated, then the people who use it for drinking and irrigation will be exposed to radionuclides. Given this inevitability, the goal at Yucca Mountain is to design a repository that will limit to an acceptable level over very long periods of time the human health effects associated with nuclear waste releases.
