Predicting the amount of water that may seep into waste emplacement tunnels (drifts) is important for assessing the performance of the proposed geologic repository for highlevel radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository will be located in thick, partially saturated fractured tuff that—for the first several hundred years after emplacement— will be heated to above-boiling temper...

We present a mathematical model of the fracturing of water-saturated rocks and other porous materials in cold climates. Ice growing inside porous rocks causes large pressures to develop that can significantly damage the rock. We study the growth of ice inside a penny-shaped cavity in a water-saturated porous rock and the consequent fracturing of the medium. Premelting of the ice against the roc...

Steel-lined pressure tunnels and shafts are used to convey water from the reservoir to the turbines in high-head hydroelectric power plants. An axisymmetrical multilayer model is often considered by engineers for the design of the steel liner. Stresses and deformations can then be computed with a closed-form analytical solution in isotropic rock. When the rock is anisotropic, the lowest elastic...

Rock typing is known as the best way in heterogeneous reservoirs characterization. The rock typing methods confine to various aspects of the rocks such as multi-scale and multi-modal pore types and size, rock texture, diagenetic modifications and integration of static/dynamic data. Integration of static and dynamic behavior of rocks and their sedimentary features are practiced in this study. Po...

Air movement and associated oxygen transport through waste rock dumps has the potential to significantly enhance the rate of oxidation of pyrite-bearing material. While this is a desired outcome for most heap leach operations, airflow in waste rock storage facilities can result in significant increases in generation and acceleration of acid rock drainage. Hence, a good understanding of internal...

Microbial abundance and diversity in deep subsurface environments is dependent upon the availability of energy and carbon. However, supplies of oxidants and reductants capable of sustaining life within mafic and ultramafic continental aquifers undergoing low-temperature water-rock reaction are relatively unknown. We conducted an extensive analysis of the geochemistry and microbial communities r...

The nature of ancient hydrological systems onMars has been the subject of ongoing controversy, driven largely by a disconnect between observational evidence for flowing water on the Martian surface at multiple scales and the incompatibility of such observations with theoretical models that predict a cold early Martian environment in which liquid water is unstable. Here we present geochemical da...

The effects of CO2-water-rock interactions on the mechanical properties of shale are essential for estimating the possibility of sequestrating CO2 in shale reservoirs. In this study, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) tests together with an acoustic emission (AE) system and SEM and EDS analysis were performed to investigate the mechanical properties and microstructural changes of black shales ...

Background: Uranium poses both chemical and radiological hazard to the living system. Drinking water from river is one of the major sources of uranium intake. Dissolution of minerals, washout from rain water, rock-water interaction, agricultural run off, and industrial disposals are some of the sources of uranium in river water system. Present study was aimed to determine the uranium in the wat...

Introduction: The discovery of substantial evaporite deposits at the Opportunity rover landing site in Meridiani Planum on Mars argues for significant interactions between liquid water and local rocks during some stage of the Martian past. However, evaporites can form under a dazzling variety of water/rock ratios, from long-term evaporation of expansive reservoirs to periodic recycling of water...