Impact of repository depth on residence times for leaking radionuclides in land-based surface water

Abstract

The multiple scales of landscape topography produce a wide distribution of groundwater circulation cells that control the hydro-geological environments surrounding geological repositories for nuclear waste. The largest circulation cells tend to discharge water into major river reaches, large freshwater systems or the nearby Baltic Sea. We investigated numerically the release of radionuclides from repositories placed in bedrock with depths between 100 to 2000 meters in a Swedish coastal area and found that leakage from the deeper positions emerges primarily in the major aquatic systems. In effect, radionuclides from the deeper repositories are more rapidly transported towards the Sea by the stream system compared to leakage from more shallow repositories. The release from the shallower repositories is significantly retained in the initial stage of the transport in the (superficial) landscape because the discharge occurs in or near low-order streams with high retention characteristics. This retention and residence time for radioactivity in the landscape control radiological doses to biota and can, thus, be expected to constitute an essential part of an associated risk evaluation

Keywords

Hydrology; radio nuclide migration; surface water-groundwater interaction

Published in

Acta Geophysica
2007, volume: 55, number: 1, pages: 73-84

SLU Authors

• Marklund, Lars

  • Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Fish and Aquacultural Science
Environmental Sciences and Nature Conservation

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/s11600-006-0040-9

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/11173