Stochastic simulation of uranium migration at the Hanford 300 Area

This work focuses on the quantification of groundwater flow and subsequent U(VI) transport uncertainty due to heterogeneity in the sediment permeability at the Hanford 300 Area. U(VI) migration at the site is simulated with multiple realizations of stochastically-generated high resolution permeabili...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of contaminant hydrology 2011-03, Vol.120, p.115-128
Main Authors: Hammond, Glenn E., Lichtner, Peter C., Rockhold, Mark L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
COLUMBIA RIVER
Computer Simulation
Computing Methodologies
DISTRIBUTION
Environmental Monitoring - methods
Flux
Geologic Sediments - analysis
GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES
GEOSCIENCES
Groundwater
Hanford 300 Area
Hanford 300 Area, stochastic simulation
Heterogeneity
Heterogeneous permeability
High performance computing
Migration
PERMEABILITY
PLUMES
Reactive transport
RESOLUTION
RIVERS
Rivers - chemistry
SEDIMENTS
SIMULATION
Stochastic Processes
SUPERCOMPUTERS
supercomputing
TRANSPORT
URANIUM
Uranium - analysis
Washington
WATER
Water Movements
Water Pollutants, Radioactive - analysis
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Summary:This work focuses on the quantification of groundwater flow and subsequent U(VI) transport uncertainty due to heterogeneity in the sediment permeability at the Hanford 300 Area. U(VI) migration at the site is simulated with multiple realizations of stochastically-generated high resolution permeability fields and comparisons are made of cumulative water and U(VI) flux to the Columbia River. The massively parallel reactive flow and transport code PFLOTRAN is employed utilizing 40,960 processor cores on DOE's petascale Jaguar supercomputer to simultaneously execute 10 transient, variably-saturated groundwater flow and U(VI) transport simulations within 3D heterogeneous permeability fields using the code's multi-realization simulation capability. Simulation results demonstrate that the cumulative U(VI) flux to the Columbia River is less responsive to fine scale heterogeneity in permeability and more sensitive to the distribution of permeability within the river hyporheic zone and mean permeability of larger-scale geologic structures at the site.
ISSN:0169-7722
1873-6009
DOI:10.1016/j.jconhyd.2010.04.005