A safety assessment is carried out for the near-surface radioactive waste disposal in the reference engineered vault facility. The analysis is mainly divided into two parts. One deals with the release and transport of radionuclide in the vault and unsaturated zone. The other deals with the transport of radionuclide in the saturated zone and radiological impacts to a human group under well drinking water scenario. The parameters for source-term, geosphere and biosphere models are mainly obtained from the site specific data. The results show that the annual effective doses are dominated by long lived, mobile radionuclides and their associated daughters. And it is found that the total effective dose for drinking water is far below the general criteria of regulatory limit for radioactive waste disposal facility.