Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM) Phase II Demonstration
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Savannah River National Lab. (SRNL), Aiken, SC (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- LBNL
In 2009, the National Academies of Science (NAS) reviewed and validated the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) Technology Program in its publication, Advice on the Department of Energy’s Cleanup Technology Roadmap: Gaps and Bridges. The NAS report outlined prioritization needs for the Groundwater and Soil Remediation Roadmap, concluded that contaminant behavior in the subsurface is poorly understood, and recommended further research in this area as a high priority. To address this NAS concern, the EM Office of Site Restoration began supporting the development of the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM). ASCEM is a state-of-the-art scientific approach that uses an integration of toolsets for understanding and predicting contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. The ASCEM modeling toolset is modular and open source. It is divided into three thrust areas: Multi-Process High Performance Computing (HPC), Platform and Integrated Toolsets, and Site Applications. The ASCEM toolsets will facilitate integrated approaches to modeling and site characterization that enable robust and standardized assessments of performance and risk for EM cleanup and closure activities. During fiscal year 2012, the ASCEM project continued to make significant progress in capabilities development. Capability development occurred in both the Platform and Integrated Toolsets and Multi-Process HPC Simulator areas. The new Platform and Integrated Toolsets capabilities provide the user an interface and the tools necessary for end-to-end model development that includes conceptual model definition, data management for model input, model calibration and uncertainty analysis, and model output processing including visualization. The new HPC Simulator capabilities target increased functionality of process model representations, toolsets for interaction with the Platform, and model confidence testing and verification for quality assurance. The Platform and HPC capabilities are being tested and evaluated for EM applications through a suite of demonstrations being conducted by the Site Applications Thrust. In 2010, the Phase I Demonstration focused on testing initial ASCEM capabilities. The Phase II Demonstration, completed in September 2012, focused on showcasing integrated ASCEM capabilities. For Phase II, the Hanford Site Deep Vadose Zone (BC Cribs) served as an application site for an end-to-end demonstration of ASCEM capabilities on a site with relatively sparse data, with emphasis on integration and linkages between the Platform and HPC components. Other demonstrations included in this Phase II report included addressing attenuation-based remedies at the Savannah River Site F-Area, to exercise linked ASCEM components under data-dense and complex geochemical conditions, and conducting detailed simulations of a representative waste tank. This report includes descriptive examples developed by the Hanford Site Deep Vadose Zone, the SRS F-Area Attenuation-Based Remedies for the Subsurface, and the Waste Tank Performance Assessment working groups. The integrated Phase II Demonstration provides test cases to accompany distribution of the initial user release (Version 1.0) of the ASCEM software tools to a limited set of users in 2013. These test cases will be expanded with each new release, leading up to the release of a version that is qualified for regulatory applications in the 2015 time frame.
- Research Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE EM Office of Soil and Groundwater Remediation (EM-12)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-08SR22470; AC02-05CH11231; EY4049110
- OSTI ID:
- 1055500
- Report Number(s):
- ASCEM-SITE-2012-01
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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