HR: 1340h
AN: H33H-1722    [Abstracts]
TI: Development of a Sitewide Groundwater Flow and Radionuclide Transport Model at Idaho National Laboratory
AU: * Huang, H
EM: Hai.Huang@inl.gov
AF: Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, MS 2025, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, United States
AU: Magnuson, S
EM: Swen.Magnuson@inl.gov
AF: Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, MS 2025, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, United States
AU: Podgorney, R
EM: Robert.Podgorney@inl.gov
AF: Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, MS 2025, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, United States
AU: Sondrup, J
EM: Jeffery.Sondrup@inl.gov
AF: Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, MS 2025, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, United States
AU: Wood, T
EM: Thomas.Wood@inl.gov
AF: Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, MS 2025, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, United States
AB: A three-dimensional (3D) groundwater flow and radionuclide transport model with a domain of 6400 square kilometers was developed for the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The model provides a comprehensive evaluation of environmental impacts from operations at the INL on the underlying Snake River Plain Aquifer. The aquifer consists of highly heterogeneous fractured basalt rocks and discontinuous sedimentary interbeds. A multi-objective automated inverse simulation was applied to simultaneously calibrate the model to measured heads, groundwater velocities estimated from isotope studies and derived total water fluxes across model boundaries. A total of 225 wells were used during the calibration of the flow model. A pilot point approach was adopted in the inverse simulations in order to model spatial heterogeneity in the aquifer. This approach resulted in a large inverse problem with more than 350 model parameters to be estimated. A regularization procedure was used to reduce the non-uniqueness of the inverse problem. The transport simulation of tritium transport at the INL over the past 56 years was found to be in agreement with groundwater monitoring data.
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1849 Numerical approximations and analysis
DE: 1869 Stochastic hydrology
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting