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Savannah River Site video on innovative remediation for radioactive contaminants1 min read

by Marilyn Saarni on September 3, 2015

Announcements Hydrogeology Department In The Press

Haruko Wainwright, from Savannah River Site video

Savannah River National Laboratory has just released this video showing how they have developed an innovative remediation method for groundwater radioactive contaminants at the Savannah River Site. (The Savannah River Site is a national nuclear weapons site that shut down in the 1950s.) Their method has improved capture of contaminants, and at substantially lower cost than the prior approach. ESD’s Haruko Wainwright played an important role in this project.

Haruko applied modeling to evaluate the engineering used to reduce groundwater radioactive contaminants at the Savannah River Site.  The model used 30 years of Savannah River Site data on groundwater flows, underground structure, and geochemical reactions of contaminants to injected chemicals. This model was developed with the support of DOE’s ASCEM (Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management) project. In the video you can view how the plume moves underground.

The image below was created using the subsurface flow and transport simulator Amanzi, which was developed with the support of DOE-EM’s ASCEM project. It shows the simulated tritium plume (blue) in the 3D flow and transport model at the Savannah River Site F-Area. The plume (blue) is extending from the seepage basin through the vadose zone and groundwater. The blocks of green, red and brown are the low-permeability barriers, which were constructed in 2004 to direct the plume into the treatment gates. At the gates, the treatment water is injected to immobilize uranium. The barriers are also intended to slow down the groundwater flow, and to increase the tritium decay before entering the stream at downgradient.

Model of plume (blue) under Savannah River Site, showing gates (green, brown and red) installed to reduce radioactive contaminants in plume. This image was created from the subsurface flow and transport simulator Amanzi, which was developed in DOE-EM's ASCEM project.

 

News & Events

EESA Celebrates International Day of Women & Girls in Science2 min read

February 24, 2021

On 11 February, the United Nations, Berkeley Lab, and other organizations worldwide marked the 6th annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The day focuses on the reality that science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of international development goals, such as climate change mitigation. Susan Hubbard, Associate Laboratory Director…

EESA Scientists Contribute to DOE GTO Research on Critical Minerals2 min read

  Scientists in the Energy Geosciences Division are contributing to research sponsored by the DOE Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) investigating the potential extraction of lithium, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals that are dissolved constituents of hot geothermal brines that are used to produce  electricity. Far more information is currently needed, for instance, about…

CSA News Calls Out Recent NGEE-Tropics Research2 min read

February 22, 2021

  CSA News, the magazine of three related societies: the Agronomy Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, published an article in its January 2021 issue describing research led by research scientist Robinson Negrón Juárez, on behalf of the NGEE-Tropics project. The article highlights a paper published recently…

Two EESA Women Chosen for the 2020 Women @ The Lab Awards2 min read

February 9, 2021

Two EESA women, Sandy Chin and Laura Nielsen Lammers, were chosen for the 2020 Women @ The Lab awards. They join an esteemed cohort of 15 women across Berkeley Lab who have made and continue to make significant contributions in the areas of leadership, science, operations, mentorship, and outreach.  Sandy Chin, who recently assumed the…

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