Soil gas waste site screening at the Savannah River Site
- Westinghouse Savannah River Co., Aiken, SC (United States)
- Microseeps, Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
The environmental restoration effort at Savannah River Site (SRS) has utilized soil gas sampling as a principal method for screening and characterizing waste sites. More than 98 waste sites have been evaluated using this technology at scattered locations across the 310 square mile area of the facility, generating over 6,000 soil gas samples arranged in clustered data sets of 25 to 2,000 samples each. Additionally, a regional background survey of soil gases has been carried out over a 500 square mile area which includes the SRS for the purpose of determining the background concentrations of species of interest which relate to waste site investigations. Although selected waste sites have been sampled using a Geoprobe soil gas sampling system to depths of 25 feet, for the most part the soil gas studies at SRS have been carried out at a depth of about 3 feet. In many cases this depth is several feet above the depth of waste burial. A series of ``groundsheet`` studies have been carried out which reveal that barometric pumping is the mechanism which is responsible for the presence near the surface of volatile components of the more deeply buried waste. These studies found that barometric pumping causes soil gases containing volatile contaminants to migrate through the ground surface into the atmosphere. The surveys monitored the presence of the C{sub 1}--C{sub 4} hydrocarbons, the C{sub 5}--C{sub 10} normal paraffins, the gasoline range aromatics (BTEX), and selected chlorinated hydrocarbons. In a large majority of the shallow surveys conducted, a free-gas method of soil gas technology was employed in which the soil gas sample was obtained directly from the pore space. At selected waste sites, soil cores were taken and soil gas was analyzed from a portion of the heated headspace over a soil/water slurry. At most waste sites, shallow (1 foot) soil cores were taken and analyzed for soil mercury using a pyrolysis screening technique commonly used in the minerals industry.
- Research Organization:
- Westinghouse Savannah River Co., Aiken, SC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-89SR18035
- OSTI ID:
- 10186502
- Report Number(s):
- WSRC-MS-93-513; CONF-931095-12; ON: DE94001182; TRN: AHC29313%%17
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Department of Energy environmental remediation conference,Augusta, GA (United States),24-28 Oct 1993; Other Information: PBD: [1993]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Methods for the collection of subsurface samples during environmental site assessments
Evaluation of effectiveness of ground water screening with a field GC