Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:51:22.881Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The 'long tail' of anthropogenic CO2 decline in the atmosphere and its consequences for post-closure performance assessments for disposal of radioactive wastes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

N. S. Lord ,
A. Ridgwell ,
M. C. Thorne  and
D. J. Lunt
N. S. Lord*
Affiliation:
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UJ, UK
A. Ridgwell
Affiliation:
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UJ, UK Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside CA, USA
M. C. Thorne
Affiliation:
Mike Thorne and Associates Limited, Quarry Cottage, Hamsterley, County Durham DL13 3NJ, UK
D. J. Lunt
Affiliation:
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UJ, UK
*
*E-mail: natalie.lord@bristol.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The extended timescales involved in the decay of radioactive wastes to safe levels mean that geological disposal facilities must continue to function effectively long into the future. It is therefore essential to consider long-term climate evolution in post-closure performance assessments in order to evaluate a geological disposal system's response and robustness to a variety of potential environmental changes, driven by both natural and anthropogenic forcings. In this paper, we illustrate the multiple decay components that characterize the primary driver of climate change – atmospheric CO2 – in response to fossil fuel carbon emissions. We perform a multi-exponential analysis on a series of atmospheric CO2 decay curves predicted by an Earth system model and create an empirical response function that encapsulates the long-term (>1 kyr) removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. We present this response function as a simple tool for rapidly projecting the future atmospheric CO2 concentration resulting from any plausible cumulative release of CO2. We discuss the implications of the long 'tail' to this atmospheric CO2 decay curve, both in terms of future climate evolution as well as potential impacts on radioactive waste repositories.

Keywords

carbon cycleclimate changeradioactive waste disposal
Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 79 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1613 - 1623
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2015. This is an open access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2015

References

Archer, D. (2005) Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, 110. doi: 10.1029/2004JC0026252625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, D. and Brovkin, V (2008) The millennial atmospheric lifetime of anthropogenic CO2 . Climatic Change, 90, 283–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, D. and Ganopolski, A. (2005) A movable trigger: Fossil fuel CO2 and the onset of the next glaciation. Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 6. doi: 10.1029/2004GC00891.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, D., Kheshgi, H. and Maier-Reimer, E. (1997) Multiple timescales for neutralization of fossil fuel CO2 . Geophysical Research Letters, 24, 405–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, D., Kheshgi, H. and Maier-Reimer, E. (1998) Dynamics of fossil fuel CO2 neutralization by marine CaCO3 . Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 12, 259–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, J. K., Lindborg, T and Thorne, M. (2014) Influence of climate on landscape characteristics in safety assessments of repositories for radioactive wastes. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 138, 192–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berger, A. and Loutre, M.F. (2002) An exceptionally long interglacial ahead? Science, 297, 1287–1288.Google ScholarPubMed
Charbit, S., Paillard, D. and Ramstein, G. (2008) Amount of CO2 emissions irreversibly leading to the total melting of Greenland. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, 33472.Google Scholar
Church, J.A. et al. (2013) Sea level change. Pp. 1137-1216 in: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (T.F. Stocker et al., editors). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA.Google Scholar
Ciais, P. et al. (2013) Carbon and other biogeochemical cycles. Pp. 465-570 in: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (T.F. Stocker et al., editors). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA.Google Scholar
Clayton, K. (1994) Glaciation of the British Isles: An Approach Seeking to Determine the Role of Glaciation in Landform Development over the Last Million Years. Nirex Safety Studies Report NSS/R337, Available from Radioactive Waste Management Limited, UK.Google Scholar
Colbourn, G. (2011) Weathering effects on the carbon cycle in an Earth System Model. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, UK.Google Scholar
Colbourn, G., Ridgwell, A. and Lenton, T M. (2013) The Rock Geochemical Model (RokGeM) v0.9. Geoscientific Model Development, 6, 1543–1573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colbourn, G., Ridgwell, A. and Lenton, T (2015) The time scale of the silicate weathering negative feedback on atmospheric CO2 . Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 29, 583–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eby, M., Zickfeld, K., Montenegro, A., Archer, D., Meissner, K.J. and Weaver, A.J. (2009) Lifetime of anthropogenic climate change: millennial time scales of potential CO2 and surface temperature perturbations. Journal of Climate, 22, 2501–2511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, N. and Marsh, R. (2005) Uncertainties due to transport-parameter sensitivity in an efficient 3-D ocean-climate model. Climate Dynamics, 24, 415–433.Google Scholar
Fish, P. et al. (2010) LLWR Environmental Safety Case: Forecasting the Development of the Cumbrian Coastline in the Vicinity of the LLWR Site. Quintessa Report QRS 1443X1, Version 1.Google Scholar
French, H.M. (2007) The Periglacial Environment. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK.Google Scholar
Hays, J.D., Imbrie, J. and Shackleton, N.J. (1976) Variations in the earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Science, 194, 1121–1132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
IPCC (1990) Contribution of Working Group 1 to the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment (J.T. Houghton, G.J. Jenkins, and J.J. Ephraums, editors), 410 pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, USA.Google Scholar
IPCC (1995) Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (J.T. Houghton, L.G. Meiro Filho, B.A. Callander, N.R.P. Harris, A. Kattenberg and K. Maskell, editors), 532 pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, USA.Google Scholar
IPCC (2001) Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (J.T. Houghton et al., editors), 786 pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, USA.Google Scholar
IPCC (2007) Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (S. Solomon et al., editors) 940 pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, USA.Google Scholar
Kawamura, K. et al. (2007) Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years. Nature, 448, 912–914.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohfeld, K.E. and Ridgwell, A. (2009) Glacial-intergla-cial variability in atmospheric CO2. Pp. 251–286 in: Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Processes (C. Quere and E.S. Saltzman, editors). American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, USA.Google Scholar
Laskar, J., Robutel, P., Joutel, F., Gastineau, M., Correia, A.C.M. and Levrard, B. (2004) A long-term numerical solution for the insolation quantities of the Earth. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 428, 261–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenton, T.M. and Britton, C. (2006) Enhanced carbonate and silicate weathering accelerates recovery from fossil fuel CO2 perturbations. GlobalBiogeochemical Cycles, 20. doi: 10.1029/2005GB002678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LLWR (2011) Environmental Safety Case - Main Report. LLWR/ESC/(R11)10016. Google Scholar
Luthi, D. et al. (2008) High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, 453, 379–382.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martinez-Boti, M. A et al. (2015) Plio-Pleistocene climate sensitivity evaluated using high-resolution CO2 records. Nature, 518, 49.Google ScholarPubMed
Milankovitch, M. (1941) Canon of Insolation and the Ice- Age Problem. Royal Serbian Academy Special Publication, 132. [Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem (1969)].Google Scholar
Paillard, D. (2001) Glacial cycles: Toward a new paradigm. Reviews of Geophysics, 39, 325–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petit, J.R. et al. (1999) Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399, 429–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ridgwell, A. and Hargreaves, J.C. (2007) Regulation of atmospheric CO2 by deep-sea sediments in an Earth system model. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 21. doi: 10:1029/2006GB002764.Google Scholar
Ridgwell, A. et al. (2007) Marine geochemical data assimilation in an efficient Earth System Model of global biogeochemical cycling. Biogeosciences, 4, 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogner, H.H. (1997) An assessment of world hydrocarbon resources. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 22, 217–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruddiman, W.F. (2006) Orbital changes and climate. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25, 3092–3112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sitch, S. et al. (2008) Evaluation of the terrestrial carbon cycle, future plant geography and climate-carbon cycle feedbacks using five Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs). Global Change Biology, 14, 2015–2039.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SKB (2011) Long-term safety for the final repository for spent nuclear fuel at Forsmark. Main report of the SR-Site project. SKB Report TR-11-01. Google Scholar
SKB (2013) Climate and climate-related issues for the safety assessment SR-PSU. SKB Report TR-13-05. Google Scholar
Thorne, M.C. (2013) Book review of J.S. Stuckless (editor). Annals of Nuclear Energy, 53, 545–549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turley, C. et al. (2010) Carbon uptake, transport and storage by oceans and the consequences of change in carbon capture and storage (CCS). Pp. 240-284 in: Issues in Environmental Science and Technology (IEST) (R.M. Harrison and R.E. Hester, editors). Royal Society of Chemistry.Google Scholar
Williams, R.G., Goodwin, P., Ridgwell, A. and Woodworth, P.L. (2012) How warming and steric sea level rise relate to cumulative carbon emissions. Geophysical Research Letters, 39. doi: 10.1029/2012GL052771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar