Groundwater Pathway Model for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Area 54, Area G, Revision 1

Stauffer, Philip H.; Chu, Shaoping; Miller, Terry A.; Strobridge, Daniel M.; Cole, Gregory; Birdsell, Kay Hanson; Robinson, Bruce A.; Gable, Carl W.; Broxton, D.E.; Springer, Everett P.; Schofield, T. G.

doi:10.2172/1343692

Cited by 1 publication

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“…However, it is acknowledged that radioactive material may interact with the surrounding environment beyond the passive institutional control period of 1000 years. In fact, simulations for groundwater transport scenarios have been conducted out to 100,000 years in order to evaluate full residence time distributions for breakthrough at the compliance point for the groundwater pathway [20]. The work reported here extends the erosion analysis to 10,000 years to gain critical insight into the potential for long-term erosion and to better understand the limitations of the long-term erosion modeling analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating 10,000 Years of Erosion to Assess Nuclear Waste Repository Performance

et al. 2019

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Long-term environmental performance assessments of natural processes, including erosion, are critically important for waste repository site evaluation. However, assessing a site’s ability to continuously function is challenging due to parameter uncertainty and compounding nonlinear processes. In lieu of unavailable site data for model calibration, we present a workflow to include multiple sources of surrogate data and reduced-order models to validate parameters for a long-term erosion assessment of a low-level radioactive nuclear waste repository. We apply this new workflow to a low-level waste repository on mesas in Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. To account for parameter uncertainty, we simulate high-, moderate-, and low-erosion cases. The assessment extends to 10,000 years, which results in large erosion uncertainties, but is necessary given the nature of the interred waste. Our long-term erosion analysis shows that high-erosion scenarios produce rounded mesa tops and partially filled canyons, diverging from the moderate-erosion case that results in gullies and sharp mesa rims. Our novel model parameterization workflow and modeling exercise demonstrates the utility of long-term assessments, identifies sources of erosion forecast uncertainty, and demonstrates the utility of landscape evolution model development. We conclude with a discussion on methods to reduce assessment uncertainty and increase model confidence.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%