HATCHES - a thermodynamic database and management system

The Nirex Safety Assessment Research Programme has been compiling the thermodynamic data necessary to allow simulations of the aqueous behaviour of the elements important to radioactive waste disposal to be made. These data have been obtained from the literature, when available, and validated for the conditions of interest by experiment. In order to maintain these data in an accessible form and to satisfy quality assurance on all data used for assessments, a database has been constructed which resides on a personal computer operating under MS-DOS using the Ashton-Tate dBase III program. This database contains all the input data fields required by the PHREEQE program and, in addition, a body of text which describes the source of the data and the derivation of the PHREEQE input parameters from the source data. The HATCHES system consists of this database, a suite of programs to facilitate the searching and listing of data and a further suite of programs to convert the dBase III files to PHREEQE database format. (Author)