Mobility of Radionuclides in Fractured Carbonate Rocks: Lessons from a Field-Scale Transport Experiment.

ABSTRACT: Current research on radionuclide disposal is mostly conducted in granite, clay, saltstone, or volcanic tuff formations. These rock types are not always available to host a geological repository in every nuclear waste-generating country, but carbonate rocks may serve as a potential alternative. To assess their feasibility, a forced gradient cross-borehole tracer experiment was conducted in a saturated fractured chalk formation. The mobility of stable Sr and Cs (as analogs for their radioactive counterparts), Ce (an actinide analog), Re (a Tc analog), bentonite particles, and fluorescent dye tracers through the flow path was analyzed. The migration of each of these radionuclide analogs (RAs) was shown to be dependent upon their chemical speciation in solution, their interactions with bentoni

SUBMITTER: Tran EL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7498145 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature