Field research program for unsaturated flow and transport experimentation

This paper reports that as part of the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project, a field research program has been developed to refine and validate program has been developed to refine and validate models for flow and transport through unsaturated fractured rock. Validation of these models within the range of their application for performance assessment requires a more sophisticated understanding of the processes that govern flow and transport within fractured porous media than currently exists. In particular, the authors' research is prioritized according to understanding and modeling process that, if not accurately incorporated into performance assessment model, would adversely impact the project's ability to evaluate repository performance. For this reason, the authors have oriented our field program toward enhancing our understanding of scaling processes as they relate to effective media property modeling, as well as the to the conceptual modeling of complex flow and transport phenomena