Quarterly Report to the Harry Reid Center

UCCSN-DOE Cooperative Agreement

Task 12: Seismic Monitoring

PI: James N. Brune

UNR Seismological Laboratory

Report Period: 10/01/2001 – 12/31/2001

Progress:

During this reporting period (Oct-Dec 2001), we have maintained seismic operations under the QA procedures which have been established with the HRC. Data collection has been above 99% overall. Aside from routine field maintenance and repairs, we have hardened the AL5 communications line with steel conduit.

The final FY00 seismicity report was submitted in October. DOE provided a few minor comments on the submitted report, and these were addressed in late December.

At the end of this quarter, we have analyzed the earthquakes in the YM vicinity through December 15, thus leaving a 16-day backlog. We anticipate closing this to less than 5 days within the month of January due to the relatively low seismicity rate and the availability of more human resources. Seismic activity in the YM vicinity has remained unusually low during this reporting period.

The RAID system purchased in September has been installed and is operating. This unit enables us to reliably keep online the seismic waveforms from all earthquakes located within about 60 km of Yucca Mountain since the inception of the digital network in October 1995.

Three of the five software programs addressed in NCR UNR-01-0027 have been entered into the Software Configuration Management, as Level 3 software.

Three personnel made a trip to the surface facilities area of the tunnel in November to consider the logistics for the proposed instrumentation of the WHB boreholes and of the tunnel itself. Information was gathered on telemetry possibilities, nature of the drill holes, and power availability. Selection of which boreholes to instrument is imminent.

The summary report on the seismic parameter “kappa” is in progress.

Work on the FY01 seismicity report has begun. The list of hypocenters for FY01 has been finalized and the magnitudes computed, all using QA procedures.

The project to transcibe raw seismic data previously submitted to the RPC on 4-mm tapes to DVD media is underway, with roughly 25 of 100 DVD’s created so far. Transcription of the older data depends on vendor completion of a request to move data from old 9-track tapes to 4-mm tapes. We have received only a small number of these 4-mm tapes to date. A new employee was hired on January 2 and will be dedicated to this task.

Problems:

We are still awaiting the final environmental record of decision from Death Valley National Park regarding the three stations to be installed in the park.

The DVD writer was delivered with faulty software that only allows 4.0 GB of DVD to be written, rather than the advertised 4.7 GB. This resulted in our writing 15 corrupt DVD’s before the problem was recognized. The problem is being worked on by the vendor, and we have redone the corrupt DVD’s, limiting them to 4.0 GB.

We have yet to exercise a new suggested procedure for working with escorts on NAFB.

Status of Funds:

The incremental funding is done through January 2002. We do not know, as of this writing, when exactly funds for the full fiscal year will be made available.

Plans:

We plan to start equipment purchases to support our subtasks directed at data gathering in the ESF tunnel and at the site of the proposed Waste Handling Building in January. We will start work on QA aspects of this task in this quarter.

We will complete a compendium report of NSL work on the seismic parameter kappa in January.

With the new employee, we will accelerate the re-archival of various old data sets in this quarter and will be making submittals to the RPC of “replacement” data sets made on DVD-ROM media.

The remaining two software programs will be registered with the SCM in January. These have been called out in an NCR and will require relatively minor efforts to qualify.

We will draft the FY01 seismicity report in this quarter. Due to the relatively low level of seismic activity within the monitoring network for FY01, the report will require less effort than for immediate past years.