Post-closure safety assessment of radioactive waste (RW) disposal aims to ensure that a repository remains protective of human health and the environment over long timescales. Following an eight-year site selection and evaluation program, conducted according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran Nuclear Regulatory Authority (INRA) criteria, the Anarak near-surface trench-type repository in Iran was identified as a suitable facility for the disposal of low- and intermediate-level RW. This study develops and evaluates a representative bath-tubbing scenario for the Anarak site to examine the potential long-term behavior of the system under simplified boundary conditions. The scenario, derived from the ISAM framework, was simulated using the AMBER code to estimate potential radiological consequences. It should be emphasized that the modeling approach used here is intentionally simplified and is designed only for preliminary, approximate safety assessment, rather than a comprehensive or final evaluation of repository performance. Simulation results indicate a peak annual effective dose of approximately 2.7 E-4 Sv/year occurring at about 322 years, mainly attributable to groundwater ingestion. All calculated doses remain well below IAEA/ICRP recommended limits, suggesting that the analyzed scenario does not pose significant radiological risk and provides useful input for early-stage safety evaluation and RW management planning.
Ganjaroodi et al. (2026) studied this question.