BLT-EC (Breach, Leach Transport, and Equilibrium Chemistry), a finite-element model for assessing the release of radionuclides from low-level waste disposal units: Background, theory, and model description
- Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
- California State Univ., Fresno, CA (United States)
Performance assessment models typically account for the processes of sorption and dissolution-precipitation by using an empirical distribution coefficient, commonly referred to as K{sub d} that combines the effects of all chemical reactions between solid and aqueous phases. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing awareness that performance assessments based solely on empirically based K{sub d} models may be incomplete, particularly for applications involving radionuclides having sorption and solubility properties that are sensitive to variations in the in-situ chemical environment. To accommodate variations in the in-situ chemical environment, and to assess its impact on radionuclide mobility, it is necessary to model radionuclide release, transport, and chemical processes in a coupled fashion. This modeling has been done and incorporated into the two-dimensional, finite-element, computer code BLT-EC (Breach, Leach, Transport, Equilibrium Chemistry). BLT-EC is capable of predicting container degradation, waste-form leaching, and advective-dispersive, multispecies, solute transport. BLT-EC accounts for retardation directly by modeling the chemical processes of complexation, sorption, dissolution-precipitation, ion-exchange, and oxidation-reduction reactions. In this report we: (1) present a detailed description of the various physical and chemical processes that control the release and migration of radionuclides from shallow land LLW disposal facilities; (2) formulate the mathematical models that represent these processes; (3) outline how these models are incorporated and implemented in BLT-EC; and (4) demonstrate the application of BLT-EC on a set of example problems.
- Research Organization:
- US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Washington, DC (United States). Div. of Regulatory Applications; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); California State University, Fresno, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- OSTI ID:
- 108216
- Report Number(s):
- NUREG/CR-6305; BNL-NUREG-52446; ON: TI95017659; TRN: 95:021999
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Aug 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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