Preliminary transport analyses for design of the tuff radionuclide-migration field experiment

Los Alamos, Sandia and Argonne National Laboratories will cooperatively conduct several small-scale field experiments to evaluate the potential for radionuclide transport resulting from fluid flow through joints in fractured porous rock. Preliminary radionuclide transport analyses have been conducted in order to obtain guidance for selecting optimum operating conditions for such field experiments, selecting experimental sites, and designing experimental equipment commensurate with those operating conditions. The transport analyses were based on available experimental data and were conducted to examine the genera behavior of a hypothetical experiment involving an idealized joint, which could represent a natural or man-made fracture, a fault, or a parting plane. In the idealized joint, modeled as two semi-infinite, parallel plates confining an aqueous solution in one-dimensional, laminar flow, transport of dissolved radionuclides was considered to be dominated by convection in the flow