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Analysis of vadose zone tritium transport from an underground storage tank release using numerical modeling and geostatistics

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/647114· OSTI ID:647114

Numerical and geostatistical analyses show that the artificial smoothing effect of kriging removes high permeability flow paths from hydrogeologic data sets, reducing simulated contaminant transport rates in heterogeneous vadose zone systems. therefore, kriging alone is not recommended for estimating the spatial distribution of soil hydraulic properties for contaminant transport analysis at vadose zone sites. Vadose zone transport if modeled more effectively by combining kriging with stochastic simulation to better represent the high degree of spatial variability usually found in the hydraulic properties of field soils. However, kriging is a viable technique for estimating the initial mass distribution of contaminants in the subsurface.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
647114
Report Number(s):
UCRL-LR--128840; ON: DE98054672
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English