Influences on Effective Decay Rates of Radionuclides in Groundwater: F-Area Seepage Basins, Savannah River Site - 17149
- Savannah River National Laboratory (United States)
Effective decay rates for radionuclides incorporate all attenuation mechanisms and are useful for assessing the progress of natural or enhanced attenuation. If a concentration versus time trend at a given monitoring well behaves according to first-order decay, then an effective decay constant can be calculated from the slope of the linear trend. It is important to view time trends in terms of all possible processes that can affect them prior to evaluating effective decay rates, because changes to groundwater flow and attenuation processes influence the rate at which contaminant concentrations decrease. In addition, other factors can lead to apparent changes in the effective decay rate. Groundwater associated with the F-Area Seepage Basins at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina provides an excellent case study for examining processes that affect concentration versus time trends and some of the pitfalls in evaluating effective decay rates. The site has an extensive groundwater monitoring database and its history is well known. The objective of this case study is to highlight the importance of viewing a site holistically in any evaluation of effective decay rates, because what is obvious at the F-Area Seepage Basins may not be obvious at sites with sparser monitoring data and more obscure histories. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22794551
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-19-WM-17149; TRN: US19V0229038770
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2017 Conference: 43. Annual Waste Management Symposium, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 5-9 Mar 2017; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs.; available online at: http://archive.wmsym.org/2017/index.html
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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