Publications

The US DOE, with technical assistance from Sandia National Laboratories, has successfully received EPA certification and opened the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a nuclear waste disposal facility located approximately 42 km east of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Performance assessment analyses indicate that human intrusions by inadvertent, intermittent drilling for resources provide the only credible mechanisms for releases of radionuclides from the disposal system. In modeling long-term brine releases, subsequent to a drilling event, potential migration pathways through the permeable layers of rock above the Salado formation were analyzed. Major emphasis is placed on the Culebra Member of the Rustler Formation because this is the most transmissive geologic layer overlying the WIPP site. In order to help quantify parameters for the calculated releases, radionuclide transport experiments have been earned out using intact-core columns obtained from the Culebra dolomite member of the Rustler Formation within the WIPP site. This paper deals primarily with results of analyses for {sup 241}Pu and {sup 241}Am distributions developed during transport experiments in one of these cores. Transport experiments were done using a synthetic brine that simulates Culebra brine at the core recovery location (the WIPP air-intake shaft--AIS). Hydraulic characteristics (i.e., apparent porosity and apparent dispersion coefficient) for intact-core columns were obtained via experiments using the conservative tracer {sup 22}Na. Elution experiments carried out over periods of a few days with tracers {sup 232}U and {sup 239}Np indicated that these tracers were weakly retarded as indicated by delayed elution of the species. Elution experiments with tracers {sup 241}Pu and {sup 241}Am were attempted, but no elution of either species has been observed to date, including experiments of many months' duration. In order to quantify retardation of the non-eluted species {sup 241}Pu and {sup 241}Am after a period of brine flow, non-destructive and destructive analyses of one intact-core column were carried out to determine distribution of these actinides in the rock. Analytical results indicate that the majority of the {sup 241}Am remained very near the injection surface of the core (possibly as a precipitate), and that the majority of the {sup 241}Pu was dispersed with a very high apparent retardation value. The {sup 241}Pu distribution is interpreted using a single-porosity advection-dispersion model, and an approximate retardation value is reported.

Radionuclide transport experiments were carried out using intact cores obtained from the Culebra member of the Rustler Formation inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Air Intake Shaft. Twenty-seven separate tests are reported here and include experiments with {sup 3}H, {sup 22}Na, {sup 241}Am, {sup 239}Np, {sup 228}Th, {sup 232}U and {sup 241}Pu, and two brine types, AIS and ERDA 6. The {sup 3}H was bound as water and provides a measure of advection, dispersion, and water self-diffusion. The other tracers were injected as dissolved ions at concentrations below solubility limits, except for americium. The objective of the intact rock column flow experiments is to demonstrate and quantify transport retardation coefficients, (R) for the actinides Pu, Am, U, Th and Np, in intact core samples of the Culebra Dolomite. The measured R values are used to estimate partition coefficients, (kd) for the solute species. Those kd values may be compared to values obtained from empirical and mechanistic adsorption batch experiments, to provide predictions of actinide retardation in the Culebra. Three parameters that may influence actinide R values were varied in the experiments; core, brine and flow rate. Testing five separate core samples from four different core borings provided an indication of sample variability. While most testing was performed with Culebra brine, limited tests were carried out with a Salado brine to evaluate the effect of intrusion of those lower waters. Varying flow rate provided an indication of rate dependent solute interactions such as sorption kinetics.

While gaining increasing interest, the use of Computerized Tomography (CT) in porous media studies has been limited by the availability of quantitative methods of analysis. Three methods are presented for the analysis of CT data and applied to images obtained from gamma transmission and gamma emission systems. The first utilizes measurement statistics and image histograms to provide exact estimates of multiple component volume contents. An improved thresholding technique in the second method allows an identification of individual voxel composition. The threshold utilizes error statistics to eliminate the arbitrary nature of current methods. Emission tomography images of solute transport are shown in the third procedure to provide in-situ measures of transport in fractured media. Application of each method is demonstrated on samples of the Culebra Dolomite of the Rustler Formation, New Mexico. Dolomite cores were collected by horizontal drilling at a depth of 218 m in the air intake shaft of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant located near Carlsbad, New Mexico.