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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

Former Intern Emily Nagamoto Wins AGU Award1 min read

March 27, 2023

Former Science Undergraduate Laboratory Intern (SULI) Emily Nagamoto received an American Geophysical Union (AGU) Outstanding Presentation Award, which honors exceptional presentations given during AGU’s 2022 Fall meeting. She was mentored by Staff Scientist Charuleka Varadharajan and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Mohammed Ombadi during her Summer 2022 SULI term. Currently an undergraduate student in Duke University’s Nicholas…

EESA Scientists Investigate How Tropical Soil Microbes Might Respond to Future Droughts2 min read

March 14, 2023

As the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems on Earth, tropical rainforests are just as critical to sustaining environmental and human systems as they are beautiful. Their unique climate with high temperatures, humidity, and precipitation promotes high primary productivity, which offsets high respiration, resulting in these ecosystems being one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth,…

Doubling Protected Lands for Biodiversity Could Require Tradeoffs With Other Land Uses, Study Finds4 min read

March 3, 2023

This article first appeared on lbl.gov. Scientists show how 30% protected land targets may not safeguard biodiversity hotspots and may negatively affect other sectors – and how data and analysis can support effective conservation and land use planning Although more than half the world’s countries have committed to protecting at least 30% of land and oceans…

Six Berkeley Lab Scientists Named AAAS Fellows6 min read

This article first appeared at lbl.gov Six researchers have been elected into the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced their 2022 Fellows, including six scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This lifetime honor, which follows…

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