USING PERFLUOROCARBON TRACERS FOR VERIFICATION OF CAP AND COVER SYSTEMS PERFORMANCE.
The Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) office has committed itself to an accelerated cleanup of its national facilities. The goal is to have much of the DOE legacy waste sites remediated by 2006. This includes closure of several sites (e.g., Rocky Flats and Fernald). With the increased focus on accelerated cleanup, there has been considerable concern about long-term stewardship issues in general, and verification and long-term monitoring (LTM) of caps and covers, in particular. Cap and cover systems (covers) are vital remedial options that will be extensively used in meeting these 2006 cleanup goals. Every buried waste site within the DOE complex will require some form of cover system. These covers are expected to last from 100 to 1000 years or more. The stakeholders can be expected to focus on system durability and sustained performance. DOE EM has set up a national committee of experts to develop a long-term capping (LTC) guidance document. Covers are subject to subsidence, erosion, desiccation, animal intrusion, plant root infiltration, etc., all of which will affect the overall performance of the cover. Very little is available in terms of long-term monitoring other than downstream groundwater or surface water monitoring. By its very nature, this can only indicate that failure of the cover system has already occurred and contaminants have been transported away from the site. This is unacceptable. Methods that indicate early cover failure (prior to contaminant release) or predict approaching cover failure are needed. The LTC committee has identified predictive monitoring technologies as a high priority need for DOE, both for new covers as well as existing covers. The same committee identified a Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) technology as one approach that may be capable of meeting the requirements for LTM. The Environmental Research and Technology Division (ERTD) at BNL developed a novel methodology for verifying and monitoring subsurface barriers (1,2). The technology uses perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs) to determine flaws (e.g., holes or cracks) and high permeability areas in subsurface barriers. Gaseous tracers are injected on one side of the barrier and searched for on the opposite side of the barrier. The sampling grid, concentration, and time of arrival of the tracer(s) on the opposite side are used to determine the size and location of flaws and relative permeability of the barrier. In addition, there are multiple tracers available, which allows different tracers to be injected in different quadrants of the barrier. This yields additional information on transport phenomena of the barrier.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-98CH10886
- OSTI ID:
- 790183
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-52647; EW4010000; R&D Project: 05127; EW4010000; TRN: US0200365
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 1 Nov 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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