Field testing plan for unsaturated zone monitoring and field studies
- and others
The University of Arizona, in cooperation with the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin, and Stephens and Associates in Albuquerque, New Mexico has developed a field testing plan for evaluating subsurface monitoring systems. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has requested development of these testing plans for low-level radioactive waste disposal sites (LLW) and for monitoring at decommissioned facilities designated under the {open_quotes}Site Decommissioning Management Plan{close_quotes} (SDMP). The tests are conducted on a 50 m by 50 m plot on the University of Arizona`s Maricopa Agricultural Center. Within the 50 m by 50 m plot one finds: (1) an instrumented buried trench, (2) monitoring islands similar to those proposed for the Ward Valley, California LLW Facility, (3) deep borehole monitoring sites, (4) gaseous transport monitoring, and (5) locations for testing non-invasive geophysical measurement techniques. The various subplot areas are instrumented with commercially available instruments such as neutron probes, time domain reflectometry probes, tensiometers, psychrometers, heat dissipation sensors, thermocouples, solution samplers, and cross-hole geophysics electrodes. Measurement depths vary from ground surface to 15 m. The data from the controlled flow and transport experiments, conducted over the plot, will be used to develop an integrated approach to long-term monitoring of the vadose zone at waste disposal sites. The data will also be used to test field-scale flow and transport models. This report describes in detail the design of the experiment and the methodology proposed for evaluating the data.
- Research Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States); Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Bureau of Economic Geology; Arizona Univ., Tucson, AZ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 395673
- Report Number(s):
- NUREG/CR-6462; ON: TI97000524; CNN: Contract NRC-04-95-046(JCN W6151); TRN: 97:000680
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Oct 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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