Sensitivity to Formation Porosity of Contaminant Transport from Nevada Test Site to Yucca Mountain
Publication: Journal of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste
Volume 15, Issue 4
Abstract
This study quantified the sensitivity of advective contaminant arrival time to the porosity of hydrogeologic units (HGUs) for groundwater transport from the Nevada Test Site (NTS) to the Yucca Mountain (YM) area in the United States. Advective arrival time of contaminants associated with underground nuclear detonations was obtained by using particle tracking on the basis of flow velocities from the Death Valley Regional Groundwater Flow System (DVRFS) model and porosity information for the HGUs along the flowpaths. The objectives were to (1) determine which HGU’s porosity is influential in contaminant advective arrival time from the NTS to the YM, and (2) apportion uncertainties in contaminant advective arrival time to the uncertainty contributions from individual HGU porosity. Over 90% of the uncertainty in advective transport arrival time from the NTS to YM could be described by uncertainties in porosity values of two of the 27 HGUs present in the DVRFS model. The study was significant for optimizing resources in field characterization to reduce uncertainty by targeting HGUs contributing the most uncertainty.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work was performed under contract number DOEDE-AC52-06NA26383 for the U.S. DOE, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office. This work was also partially supported by the Applied Research Initiative of Nevada Grant No. UNSPECIFIED06HQGR0098. We thank Tammy Kluesner at Desert Research Institute for data compilation and editing assistance.
References
Belcher, W. R. (2004). “Death Valley regional ground-water flow system, Nevada and California—Hydrogeologic framework and transient ground-water flow model.” Scientific Investigation Rep. 2004-5205, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, DC.
Beven, K. (2002). “Towards a coherent philosophy for modeling the environment.” Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 458(2026), 2465–2484.
Bredehoeft, J. (2005). “The conceptualization model problem-surprise.” Hydrogeol. J., 13(1), 37–46.
Foglia, L., Mehl, S. W., Hill, M. C., Perona, P., and Burlando, P. (2007). “Testing alternative groundwater models using cross-validation and other methods.” Ground Water, 45(5), 627–641.
Halford, K. J., and Yobbi, D. (2006). “Estimating hydraulic properties using a moving-model approach and multiple aquifer tests.” Ground Water, 44(2), 284–291.
Harbaugh, J. W., Banta, E. R., Hill, M. C., and McDonald, M. G. (2000). “MODFLOW-2000, the U.S. Geological Survey’s modular ground-water flow model—User guide to modularization concepts and the ground-water flow process.” Open-File Rep. 00-92, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, DC, 121.
Hassan, A. E., Bekhit, H. M., and Chapman, J. B. (2008). “Uncertainty assessment of a stochastic groundwater flow model using GLUE analysis.” J. Hydrol. (Amsterdam), 362(1–2), 89–109.
Poeter, E. P., Hill, M. C., Banta, E. R., Mehl, S., and Christensen, S. (2005). “UCODE_2005 and six other computer codes for universal sensitivity analysis, calibration, and uncertainty evaluation.” Techniques and Methods 6-A11, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, DC, 283.
Pohll, G., Hassan, A. E., Chapman, J. B., Papelis, C., and Andricevic, R. (1999). “Modeling ground water flow and radioactive transport in a fractured aquifer.” Ground Water, 37(5), 770–784.
Pohlmann, K. F., Hassan, A. E., and Chapman, J. B. (2002). “Modeling density-driven flow and radionuclide transport at an underground nuclear test: Uncertainty analysis and effect of parameter correlation.” Water Resour. Res., 38(5), 1059.
Pollock, D. W. (1988). “Semianalytical computation of pathlines for finite difference models.” Ground Water, 26(6), 743–750.
Pollock, D. W. (1994). “User’s guide for MODPATH/MODPATH-PLOT, Version 3: A particle tracking post-processing package for MODFLOW, the U.S. Geological Survey finite-difference ground-water flow model.” Open-File Rep. 94-464, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, DC.
Rehfeldt, K., et al. (2003). “Contaminant transport parameters for the groundwater flow and contaminant transport model of Corrective Action Units 101 and 102: Central and western Pahute Mesa, Nye County, Nevada.” Shaw/13052-201, Shaw Environmental, Inc., Las Vegas.
Rojas, R., Feyen, L., and Dassargues, A. (2009). “Sensitivity analysis of prior model probabilities and the value of prior knowledge in the assessment of conceptual model uncertainty in groundwater modelling.” Hydrol. Processes, 23(8), 1131–1146.
Sandia National Laboratories. (2007). “Saturated zone site-scale flow model,” Las Vegas.
Sun, N. Z., and Yeh, W. W-G. (2007). “Development of objective-oriented groundwater models. 1. Robust parameter identification.” Water Resour. Res., 43(2), W02420.
U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE). (1997). “Regional groundwater flow and tritium transport modeling and risk assessment of the underground test area, Nevada Test Site.” DOE/NV-477, Nevada Operations Office, Las Vegas.
U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE). (2000). “United States nuclear tests, July 1945 through September 1992.” DOE/NV-209 (Rev. 15), Nevada Operations Office, Las Vegas.
U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE). (2002). “Final environmental impact statement for a geologic repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, readers guide and summary.” DOE/EIS-0250, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Washington, DC.
Zhu, J., Pohlmann, K. F., Chapman, J. B., Russell, C. E., Carroll, R. W. H., and Shafer, D. S. (2010). “Sensitivity of solute advective travel time to porosities of hydrogeologic units.” Ground Water, 48(3), 442–447.
Zhu, J., Pohlmann, K. F., Ye, M., Shafer, D. S., and Carroll, R. W. H. (2006). “Groundwater pathways from regions upgradient of potential Yucca Mountain repository.” International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conf., American Nuclear Society, Las Vegas, 623–629.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste
Volume 15 • Issue 4 • October 2011
Pages: 219 - 227
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 17, 2010
Accepted: Jun 18, 2010
Published online: Jun 23, 2011
Published in print: Oct 1, 2011
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.