• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.203-212
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• 2009

The prediction of near field behavior around an underground high-level radioactive waste repository is important for the repository design as well as the safety assessment. In this study, a sensitivity analysis for seven parameters consisted of design parameters and material properties was carried out using a three-dimensional finite difference code. From the sensitivity analysis, it was found that the effects of borehole spacing, tunnel spacing, cooling time and rock thermal conductivity were more significant than the other parameters. For getting a statistical distribution of buffer and rock temperatures around the repository, an artificial neural network, backpropagation, was applied. The reliability of the trained neural network was tested with the cases with randomly chosen input parameters. When the parameter variation is within ${\pm}10%$, the prediction from the network was found to be reliable with about a 1% error. It was possible to calculate the temperature distribution for many cases quickly with the trained neural network. The buffer and rock temperatures showed a normal distribution with means of $98^{\circ}C$ and $83.9^{\circ}C$ standard deviations of $3.82^{\circ}C$ and $3.67^{\circ}C$, respectively. Using the neural network, it was also possible to estimate the required change in design parameters for reducing the buffer and rock temperatures for $1^{\circ}C$.