Quaternary faults near the proposed Eagle Flat low-level radioactive waste repository, Trans-Pecos Texas
- Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Bureau of Economic Geology
The Eagle Flat basin, an intermontane basin in Trans-Pecos Texas, is being considered as a possible site for the Texas repository of low-level radioactive wastes. Intermontane basins and associated normal faults formed in response to Basin and Range tectonism that began about 24 Ma ago. The most active late Tertiary and Quaternary faults occur within the Hueco Bolson (HB) and the Salt Basin/Salt Flat/Lobo Valley, west and east, respectively, of the proposed repository. Several faults of the southeast HB which are within 50 km of the site, displace middle Pleistocene deposits 10 to 24 m. The most recent surface rupture in the southeast HB probably occurred on the Amargosa fault during the Holocene. Upper Pleistocene deposits are offset 2.5 to 4.5 m, and middle Pleistocene deposits are displaced 24 m. Fault scarps within 50 km east of the proposed repository are associated with faults bounding the Salt Basin/Salt Flat/Lobo Valley. In the southern Salt Basin and northern Salt Flat, faults offset probable upper Pleistocene to Holocene deposits as much as 1.5 m. A scarp in Red Light Bolson, 13.5 km south of the site, is the closest Quaternary fault scarp to the proposed site. Only 7 km long, this scarp is part of a mostly covered, probably multisegmented, 40-km-long fault that bounds the northeastern margin of Red Light Bolson. Offsets associated with single-rupture events range from 0.6 to 3 m, and average recurrence intervals between surface ruptures since middle Pleistocene are about 10,000 to 100,000 yr. The largest historical earthquake of the region, the 1931 Valentine earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.4 and no reported surface rupture, occurred about 95 km southeast of the proposed repository.
- OSTI ID:
- 6101460
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-921058-; CODEN: GAAPBC
- Journal Information:
- Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States), Vol. 24:7; Conference: 1992 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Cincinnati, OH (United States), 26-29 Oct 1992; ISSN 0016-7592
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE FACILITIES
GEOLOGIC FAULTS
TEXAS
EARTHQUAKES
LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
QUATERNARY PERIOD
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL
SEISMICITY
SITE CHARACTERIZATION
TECTONICS
CENOZOIC ERA
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
GEOLOGIC AGES
GEOLOGIC FRACTURES
GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES
MANAGEMENT
MATERIALS
NORTH AMERICA
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
SEISMIC EVENTS
USA
WASTE DISPOSAL
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WASTES
052002* - Nuclear Fuels- Waste Disposal & Storage
540250 - Environment
Terrestrial- Site Resource & Use Studies- (1990-)