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JCCEM Contaminant Transport and Modeling Studies for Developing and Validation Transport Models

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TTP#: RL3-5-C223; Tech ID: 775


Project Overview
 This project will assess the hydrogeologic framework and contamination of the nuclear production sites in the West Siberian Basin using all available information sources, including direct interactions with Russian scientists, to benefit the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management efforts in the U.S. and in technical interchanges with the Russians.
Technology Description
 Nuclear fuel cycle activities of the Former Soviet Union have resulted in significant contamination of the environment in western Siberia. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is developing, jointly with their Russian counterparts in the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation (MINATOM), multi-scale, three-dimensional (3-D) models of the hydrogeology and potential contaminant migration in the West Siberian Basin. These models and this modeling strategy will be validated using decades of data from measured contaminant migration at the Mayak, Seversk (Tomsk-7), and Zhleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26) sites. This project is being conducted under the auspices of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Environmental Remediation and Waste Management (JCCEM).

The long-term goal of this work is to test and build confidence in the capability of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) contaminant transport models to predict future impacts of radioactive contaminant releases at DOE sites on the environment and humans. Our joint objectives are to develop semi-automated approaches integrating site characterization, conceptual modeling, and numerical modeling for radioactive contaminant transport and to validate them in multi-scale, 3-D, transient contaminant transport models for the Mayak and Seversk regions. This proven technology will then be transferred for use at DOE sites. DOE uses such models to evaluate the potential for risk from contaminated U.S. sites, and will benefit both from model validation and from technologies transferred from Russian site remediation work.

Current efforts in contaminant-transport model development are frequently behind schedule and over budget. The overall system architecture is muddled; i.e., site characterization data management, numerical model development, and evaluation of results are intermingled, and specialist roles are not well defined or managed. Site models are slow to mature, difficult to revise as new information or insights are gained, and difficult to document. Further, the physical bases of these models have not been tested "in combat"; i.e., at field scale, for substantial radionuclide concentrations, over decades of migration.

The semi-automated approach being developed and implemented in this project will result in significant cost savings and risk reduction. Cost savings will result from separating the development and implementation of the site-characterization/geographic information system (GIS) database, conceptual model development, numerical model development and implementation, and evaluation of results. Further, automation of links between components and development of the numerical representation of the conceptual model will allow a rapid-turnaround evaluation of changes to site characterization data and the site conceptual model. These savings will allow expedited assimilation of new data and hypotheses, reproducible, easily documented implementation of the numerical model, and comparison with results of "full-scale field experiments," all of which reduce the risks associated with site modeling.

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