The agency has recently published environmental standards addressing disposal of high-level radioactive wastes (40 CFR Part 191) for public review and comment (47 FR 58196). An important part of this effort is the evaluation of how effective mined geologic repositories are for isolating these wastes from the environment for many thousands of years. This technical report presents the methodology used to assess the potential annual individual doses and human exposure and geologic media contamination probabilities from projected releases of radioisotopes from a geologic repository. It describes the models that the Agency employed for this analysis and reviews the various assumptions which were made. Since this analysis is necessarily generic in nature, the methodology uses very general models of environmental pathways and considers a range of values for the various parameters used in the models.

Distributed to depository libraries in microfiche. "Prepared February 1982." "Prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under interagency agreement no. AD-89-F-1-558-0." Includes bibiliographical references. Final. "EPA520/1-82-007." "BNL-51525."

"The United States ocean dumping regulations developed pursuant to PL92-532, the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, as amended, provide for a general policy of isolation and containment of low-level radioactive waste after disposal into the ocean. In order to determine whether any particular waste packaging system is adequate to meet this general requirement, it is necessary to establish a set of performance criteria against which to evaluate a particular packaging system These performance criteria must present requirements for the behavior of the waste in combination with its immobilization agent and outer container in a deepsea environment. This report presents a working set of waste package performance criteria, and includes a glossary of terms, characteristics of low-level radioactive waste, radioisotopes of importance in low-level radioactive waste, and a summary of domestic and international regulations which control the ocean disposal of these wastes."--Abstract.