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Uranium partitioning under acidic conditions in a sandy soil aquifer

Conference ·
OSTI ID:83857
 [1];  [1];  [2]
  1. Westinghouse Savannah River Co., Aiken, SC (United States). Savannah River Technology Center
  2. Clemson Univ., SC (United States). Environmental Systems Engineering; and others
The partitioning of uranium in an aquifer down gradient of two large mixed waste sites was examined with respect to the solution and soil chemistry (e.g., pH redox potential and contaminant concentration) and aqueous-phase chemical speciation. This involved generation of field-derived, batch sorption, and reactive mineral surface sorption data. Field-derived distribution coefficients for uranium at these waste sites were found to vary between 0.40 and 15,000. Based on thermodynamic speciation modeling and a comparison of field and laboratory data, gibbsite is a potential reactive mineral surface present in modified soils at the sites. Uranium partitioning data are presented from field samples and laboratory studies of background soil and the mineral surface gibbsite. Mechanistic and empirical sorption models fit to the field-derived uranium partitioning data show an improvement of over two orders of magnitude, as measured by the normalized sum of errors squared, when compared with the single K{sub d} model used in previous risk work. Models fit to batch sorption data provided a better fit of sorbed uranium than do models fit to the field-derived data.
Research Organization:
Westinghouse Savannah River Co., Aiken, SC (United States); Georgia Inst. of Tech., Atlanta, GA (United States). School of Mechanical Engineering
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); Oak Ridge Inst. for Science and Education, TN (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC09-89SR18035; AC09-76SR00819
OSTI ID:
83857
Report Number(s):
WSRC-MS--94-0528; CONF-950216--152; ON: DE95014728
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English