Significant progress in hydrology, especially in subsurface flow and solute transport, has been made over the last 35 years because of sustained interest in underground nuclear waste repositories. The present paper provides an overview of the key hydrologic issues involved, and to highlight advances in their understanding and treatment because of these efforts. The focus is not on the developme...

Nuclear waste repositories are being installed in deep excavated rock formations in some places in Europe to isolate and store radioactive waste. In France, Callovo-Oxfordian formation (COx) is potential candidate for nuclear waste repository. It is thus necessary to measure in situ the state of a structure's health during its entire life. The monitoring of the near-field rock and the knowledge...

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...

A coupled thermal, hydrologic and mechanical (THM) analysis is conducted to evaluate the impact of coupled THM processes on the performance of a potential nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The analysis considers changes in rock mass porosity, permeability, and capillary pressure caused by rock deformations during drift excavation, as well as those caused by thermomechanically ...

Field, laboratory, and modeling studies of fractured rock have generated great interest from both fundamental and applied perspectives. Many practical applications of these studies are crucial for the exploitation of petroleum and geothermal reservoirs, the safe environmental management of groundwater, the isolation of radioactive waste in under­ ground repositories, cleanup technologies for ot...

Danger waste disposal systems are typically comprised a series of barriers that act to protect the environment and human health. The presence of several barriers enhances confidence that the waste will be adequately contained. This article is focused on one of barriers, bentonite buffer. Bentonite buffer intervene between the waste canister and the host rock. One of main tasks of the bentonite ...

During its active operation from 1973 to 1990 the Black Angel Mine in West Greenland disposed its tailings in seawater slurry to a fjord. During the disposal between 10 and 30 tons of lead and between 30 and 55 tons of zinc dissolved annually in the receiving sea water. This resulted in a significant pollution of the surrounding marine environment. Other pollution sources, particularly waste ro...

The Overburden of waste and uneconomic mineralized rock is required to be removed to mine the useful mineral resource in a surface mining operation. In this process a dump is formed by casting the waste material and dumping it in nearby area. The dump so formed is known as mine waste dump. Waste dump may be classified as internal and external dump. External dump is created outside the pit where...

The Summitville Mine was a high-elevation (3500 m) gold mine in southwestern Colorado. The mine was abandoned in 1992, leaving approximately 200 ha of disturbance comprised partially of an open pit, a cyanide heap leach pad, and two large waste rock piles. Reclamation of these mine facilities is challenging due to extreme climatic conditions in conjunction with high acid-production potential an...

Water infiltrating down a fracture in unsaturated rock experiences complex fluid-flow and heat-transfer phenomena when entering above-boiling rock temperature regions. Such conditions are expected, for example, after emplacement of heat-generating nuclear waste in underground repositories. A new, efficient semi-analytical method is proposed in this paper that simulates the flow processes of inf...