Download or read book Hydrogeochemical Feasibility Studies Related to Subsurface Flow on Yucca Mountain Nevada Test Site written by Gregory S. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ground Water at Yucca Mountain written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1992-02-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The site of a proposed repository for high-level radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants is not at risk of ground water infiltration, concludes this important book. Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been proposed as the site for permanent underground disposal of high-level radioactive waste from the nation's civilian nuclear power plants. To resolve concerns raised by a Department of Energy (DOE) staff scientist concerning the potential for ground water to rise 1,000 feet to the level proposed for the repository, DOE requested this study to evaluate independently the past history and future potential of large upward excursions of the ground water beneath Yucca Mountain.
Download or read book Results of Chemical Analyses in Support of Yucca Mountain Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ground water monitoring for the Nye County Early Warning Drilling Program (NCEWDP) was established to monitor underground water sources of the area and to protect communities surrounding the Nevada Test Site (NTS) from potential radionuclide contamination of these water sources. It provides hydrological information pertaining to groundwater flow patterns and recharge issues in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain. The Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies (HRC) obtained groundwater samples from select NCEWDP wells shown in Figure 1. These samples were analyzed for major cations, major anions, trace elements, rare earth elements, alkalinity, pH and conductivity. These geochemical results can be used to evaluate the degree of interaction between the aquifers sampled, leading to a thorough mapping of the aquifer system. With increased analysis down gradient of the Yucca Mountain area, evaluations can identify viable groundwater flow paths and establish mixing of the groundwater systems. Tracer tests provide insight into groundwater flow characteristics and transport processes of potential contaminants. These tests are important for contaminant migration issues including safe disposal of hazardous and radioactive materials and remediation of potentially released contaminants. At a minimum, two conservative (non-sorbing) tracers with different diffusion coefficients are used for each tracer test. The tracer test performed under this cooperative agreement utilized fluorinated benzoic acids and halides as conservative tracers. The tracers are of differing size and have differing rates of diffusion into the rock. Larger molecules can not enter the pore spaces that are penetrated by the smaller molecules, therefore larger tracers will travel faster through thegroundwater system. Identical responses of the two tracers indicate no appreciable diffusion into pores of the aquifer system tuff. For the Nye County Tracer Tests, the HRC provided chemical analysis for the tracer test being conducted at site 22. Samples were analyzed for multiple tracers throughout the testing period.
Download or read book Unit Evaluation at Yucca Mountain Nevada Test Site written by J. Keith Johnstone and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geohydrology of Test Well USW H 1 Yucca Mountain NYE County Nevada written by F. Eugene Rush and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project Bibliography 1994 1995 written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Use of Chlorine 36 and Other Geochemical Data to Test a Groundwater Flow Model for Yucca Mountain Nevada written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining the spatial distribution and timing of subsurface fluid percolation is one of the most important factors determining long term performance of the potential high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The nonwelded interval of the Paintbrush Group (PTn), which overlies most of the potential repository, has high matrix porosities and permeabilities and is mostly unfractured. The Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) is a 8-km long, 7.6-m diameter, tunnel excavated beneath Yucca Mountain to the level of the potential repository horizon in order to provide access for characterization of these rocks. Several samples collected within the ESF have measured 36Cl/Cl ratios that record anthropogenic 36Cl (bomb-pulse 36Cl), indicating that at least some fraction of the water has traversed the overlying PTn in 40 years or less and that flow is not confined to the matrix of that unit. The presence of a fast path transmitting bomb-pulse 36Cl to depth appears to require the simultaneous presence of a structure (such as a fault) cutting the PTn and sufficiently high magnitude to surface infiltration to initiate and sustain at least a small component of fracture flow along the connected fracture path associated with the structure. The 36Cl data have been simulated using the flow and transport model FEHM in order to establish bounds on infiltration rates at the site and to provide greater confidence in the understanding of unsaturated flow processes at the site by showing consistency between the observed and simulated data sets. An analogous effort simulating the distribution of porewater chloride concentrations is providing an independent means for confirming the conceptual model.
Download or read book Stochastic Analysis of Flow Through Unsaturated Volcanic Tuffs at the Potential Nuclear Waste Repository Site Yucca Mountain Nevada written by Steven A. Loomis and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geohydrology of Test Well USW H 3 Yucca Mountain NYE County Nevada written by William Thordarson, F. E. Rush, S. J. Waddell and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Preliminary Investigation as to the Utility of Rainier Mesa as a Supplemental Yucca Mountain Testing Facility written by Charles E. Russell and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rainier Mesa, a mountain block within the Nevada Test Site, has been utilized for nuclear testing and has also been used for investigations related to Yucca Mountain assessment studies. This report is a preliminary attempt to determine the utility of Rainier Mesa tunnels to support Yucca Mountain assessment studies. The objective was accomplished by comparing the conclusions and interpretations of previous studies both areas. A comparison of geologic, hydrologic and environmental summaries of the two mountain blocks and the results from previous Rainier Mesa/Yucca Mountain studies indicate that Rainier Mesa is suitable as a site to conduct certain types of Yucca Mountain characterization studies."--Abstract.
Download or read book Hydrogeologic Studies at Yucca Mountain Nevada USA written by Wiliam W. Dudley and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Modeling of Groundwater Flow and Radionuclide Transport at the Climax Mine Sub CAU Nevada Test Site written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yucca Flat-Climax Mine Corrective Action Unit (CAU) on the Nevada Test Site comprises 747 underground nuclear detonations, all but three of which were conducted in alluvial, volcanic, and carbonate rocks in Yucca Flat. The remaining three tests were conducted in the very different hydrogeologic setting of the Climax Mine granite stock located in Area 15 at the northern end of Yucca Flat. As part of the Corrective Action Investigation (CAI) for the Yucca Flat-Climax Mine CAU, models of groundwater flow and radionuclide transport will be developed for Yucca Flat. However, two aspects of these CAU-scale models require focused modeling at the northern end of Yucca Flat beyond the capability of these large models. First, boundary conditions and boundary flows along the northern reaches of the Yucca Flat-Climax Mine CAU require evaluation to a higher level of detail than the CAU-scale Yucca Flat model can efficiently provide. Second, radionuclide fluxes from the Climax tests require analysis of flow and transport in fractured granite, a unique hydrologic environment as compared to Yucca Flat proper. This report describes the Climax Mine sub-CAU modeling studies conducted to address these issues, with the results providing a direct feed into the CAI for the Yucca Flat-Climax Mine CAU. Three underground nuclear detonations were conducted for weapons effects testing in the Climax stock between 1962 and 1966: Hard Hat, Pile Driver, and Tiny Tot. Though there is uncertainty regarding the position of the water table in the stock, it is likely that all three tests were conducted in the unsaturated zone. In the early 1980s, the Spent Fuel Test-Climax (SFT-C) was constructed to evaluate the feasibility of retrievable, deep geologic storage of commercial nuclear reactor wastes. Detailed mapping of fractures and faults carried out for the SFT-C studies greatly expanded earlier data sets collected in association with the nuclear tests and provided invaluable information for subsequent modeling studies at Climax. The objectives of the Climax Mine sub-CAU work are to (1) provide simulated heads and groundwater flows for the northern boundaries of the Yucca Flat-Climax Mine CAU model, while incorporating alternative conceptualizations of the hydrogeologic system with their associated uncertainty, and (2) provide radionuclide fluxes from the three tests in the Climax stock using modeling techniques that account for groundwater flow in fractured granite. Meeting these two objectives required two different model scales. The northern boundary groundwater fluxes were addressed using the Death Valley Regional Flow System (DVRFS) model (Belcher, 2004) developed by the U.S. Geological Survey as a modeling framework, with refined hydrostratigraphy in a zone north of Yucca Flat and including Climax stock. Radionuclide transport was simulated using a separate model confined to the granite stock itself, but linked to regional groundwater flow through boundary conditions and calibration targets.
Download or read book A Model of the Large Hydraulic Gradient at Yucca Mountain Nevada Test Site Based on Hydraulic Conductivity Contrasts Between Cenozoic and Paleozoic Rocks written by Eric William Strom and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Characterization of Unsaturated Zone Hydrologic Properties and Their Influence on Lateral Diversion in a Volcanic Tuff at Yucca Mountain Nevada written by Lorraine E. Flint and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of the subsurface flow and distribution of water is critical to the evaluation of the unsaturated zone for a potential geologic high-level radioactive waste repository. This site is located at Yucca Mountain, Nevada in the northern Mojave Desert. and was chosen on the basis of its low precipitation, deep unsaturated zone, and layered volcanic rocks providing the potential for natural hydraulic barriers to reduce the downward percolation of water through the waste storage area. The detailed characterization of hydrologic properties is necessary to evaluate the mechanisms responsible for the distribution and flow of water in the unsaturated zone. Analyses in this study have provided detailed hydrogeologic units with unique hydrologic properties and hydraulic parameters. Porosity was determined to be a useful physical property for predicting hydraulic parameters, as it relates to the largescale deterministic processes that created the volcanic rocks. The detailed property dataset, along with field measurements of moisture status, temperature, and chemistry, were used to evaluate the potential for lateral diversion in the rocks above the potential repository. It was determined that lateral diversion is a small-scale process in this natural system. On the basis of analyses performed in this study, it is suggested that large-scale diversion is not likely to occur at this site. This mechanism should not, therefore, be relied upon to perform as a natural hydraulic barrier to flow reducing percolation through the unsaturated zone.
Download or read book Approaches to Large Scale Unsaturated Flow in Heterogeneous Stratified and Fractured Geologic Media written by Rachid Ababou and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bericht ber die Verbandstagung des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Landkrankenkassen in Bonn written by and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evidence Of Rapid Localized Groundwater Transport In Volcanic Tuffs Beneath Yucca Mountain Nevada written by J. Walker and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At Yucca Mountain, Nevada-the proposed location for a national high-level nuclear waste repository-radionuclides, if released from breached waste storage canisters, could make their way down through the unsaturated zone (where the repository would be located) into the underlying groundwater and eventually back to the biosphere (i.e., where they could adversely affect human health). The compliance boundary, 18 km south of the proposed repository, is defined as the location where a human being using groundwater would be maximally exposed to radionuclides outside of an exclusion zone set around the repository. It is thus important to predict how these radionuclides would be transported by the groundwater flow, and to predict both the concentration of and the rate at which any leaked radionuclides would arrive at the compliance boundary. We recently conducted a study of groundwater flux in the saturated zone through the Crater Flat Group, in a wellbore 15 km south of the proposed repository. The Crater Flat Group, a sequence of ash-flow tuff formations, is laterally extensive beneath the footprint of the proposed repository. Because of its intense fracturing and high permeabilities, the Bullfrog tuff is the primary unit within the Cratei Flat Group through which radionuclides would be transported, as indicated by groundwater models. In a new wellbore, NC-EWDP-24PB, we conducted flowing electrical conductivity logging (FEC), an open-wellbore logging technique, to identify flowing fractures prior to wellbore completion. While the FEC logs have identified transmissive zones, quantitative interpretation of the FEC results was difficult because differences in hydraulic heads in different flowing intervals created significant intraborehole fluid flow. The well was subsequently backfilled and completed with a distributed thermal perturbation sensor (DTPS), which introduces a thermal pulse to the wellbore and uses the thermal transient to estimate groundwater flux. Corroborating FEC observations, the DTPS has identified two flowing intervals within the Bullfrog tuff that are each approximately 20 m thick and exhibit an average specific discharge of 50 m/yr. Assuming a fracture porosity of 1%, groundwater velocities are estimated to be on the order of 5 to 10 km/yr. While these results are for one borehole, heterogeneity in the flow system may play a significant role in determining regional groundwater flow. Additional data, including geochemical and isotopic, will be needed to provide a more complete picture of the origin of the groundwater in these fast flow paths, and aid in the determination of the lateral extent of the identified flowing intervals.
