Importance of including fractures in thermohydrological modeling of flow through porous media

This paper shows that computational models used to analyze the thermal and hydrologic characteristics of a nuclear waste repository site can give unrealistic results if the porous material matrix containing the repository is assumed fracture-free and completely rigid. Numerically modeling a repository in a homogenous porous media with an assumed permeability of 10-7 darcy results in calculated pore pressures which are four times larger than the local lithostatic load. These extreme pressures would degrade the integrity of most rock. It is concluded that the characteristics of the fractures within the material matrix must be considered in the computational model in order to obtain realistic results