ABSTRACT. From the perspective of a human lifetime, the hazards of some nuclear wastes are permanent, so the warnings we place at contaminated nuclear sites must be permanent too. I address questions of how best to provide one hundred centuries of public warning at the first facility for permanent disposal, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Scenarios of intrusion developed to guide the design of warning markers predicted that most of the changes in the area will be social and cultural. Because blatant and permanent markers will increase, not reduce, the probability of inadvertent intrusion, the most appropriate warning is a “landscape of illusion.” Such a landscape needs not permanent surface markers but underground warning devices beneath a soft surface marker. No warning can guarantee deterrence for 10,000 years, however. 相似文献
In Australia, colluvial soils form large terrains which are often subjected to considerable erosion and mass movement. This study presents a laboratory evaluation of the improvement effected by hydrated lime, milled blast furnace slag and fly ash on a fine grained (erosive) colluvial soil in New South Wales, Australia. Geotechnical tests were conducted to determine the compaction and consolidation characteristics and the compressive and shear strength properties of the blended and natural soil specimens. The effect of these additives on the Atterberg limits and pH levels is also investigated. As large amounts of fly ash and steel slag are produced in New South Wales, it is economically attractive to utilize these industrial by-products for ground improvement rather than employing conventional methods such as lime treatment. This study demonstrates that for the colluvial soil tested, milled slag is the most effective in terms of improving the internal friction angle of the treated soil, while lime is the most suitable for achieving the optimum compressive strength. Non-pozzolanic fly ash is found to be inappropriate as a soil improving agent. The cost of ground treatment using the various additives is also estimated and compared. 相似文献
The understanding of the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of a clay barrier is needed for the prediction of its final in situ properties after the hydration and thermal transient in a radioactive waste repository.
As part of the CEC 1990–1994 R&D programme on radioactive waste management and storage, the CEA (Fr), CIEMAT (Sp), ENRESA (Sp), SCK · CEN (B), UPC (Sp) and UWCC (UK) have carried out a joint project on unsaturated clay behaviour (Volckaert et al., 1996). The aim of the study is to analyse and model the behaviour of a clay-based engineered barrier during its hydration phase under real repository conditions. The hydro-mechanical and thermo-hydraulic models developed in this project have been coupled to describe stress/strain behaviour, moisture migration and heat transfer. A thermo-hydraulic model has also been coupled to a geochemical code to describe the migration and formation of chemical species.
In this project, suction-controlled experiments have been performed on Boom clay (B), FoCa clay (Fr) and Almeria bentonite (Sp). The aim of these experiments is to test the validity of the interpretive model developed by Alonso and Gens (Alonso et al., 1990), and to build a database of unsaturated clay thermo-hydro-mechanical parameters. Such a database can then be used for validation exercises in which in situ experiments are simulated.
The Boom clay is a moderately swelling clay of Rupellian age. It is studied at the SCK · CEN in Belgium as a potential host rock for a radioactive waste repository. In this paper, suction-controlled experiments carried out on Boom clay by SCK · CEN are described. SCK · CEN has performed experiments to measure the relation between suction, water content and temperature and the relation between suction, stress and deformation. The applied suction-control techniques and experimental setups are detailed. The results of these experiments are discussed in the perspective of the model of Alonso and Gens. The influence of temperature on water uptake was rather small. The measured swelling-collapse behaviour can be explained by the Alonso and Gens model. 相似文献
Bentonite is currently planned to be used as buffer and backfill materials for repositories of high-level nuclear waste because these materials must have the swelling characteristics to seal the waste. In the design for buffer and backfill materials, we must choose the adequate bentonite among many kinds of bentonite in the world. The database of the swelling characteristics of various bentonites and its evaluation will be available when we will select the adequate bentonite. For this purpose, this study performed the laboratory tests on the swelling pressure and swelling deformation of four kinds of bentonite produced in Japan and the United States. These bentonites have different physicochemical properties. This study investigated the characteristics of swelling pressure and swelling deformation from the viewpoint of the physicochemical properties of each bentonite. Furthermore, this study also proposed the simplified evaluation of swelling characteristics of various bentonites on the basis of microscopic analysis. 相似文献
Waste disposal constitutes an acute problem in numerous African cities. One solution could lie in the recycling of the nutrient-rich waste into agriculture taking place in and around cities. Farmers involved in vegetable production around Jos, Nigeria, have developed a sophisticated soil fertility management strategy combining inorganic fertilizers, manure and urban waste ash. This paper: (1) investigates the socio-economic constraints linked to obtaining scarce organic inputs, particularly urban waste ash and the health hazards (particularly heavy metal contamination of soil and crops) caused by using this ash and (2) suggests ways to improve use of this important resource. 相似文献
Abstract. Municipal solid waste combustion leads to concentration of various metals in the solid residue (fly ash) remaining after combustion. These metals pose serious environmental hazard and require proper handling and monitoring in order to control their harmful effects. Leachability of some metals from fly ash was examined in fly ash and Milli-Q water mixture (liquid-to-solid ratio, 100) under various temperature and pH conditions in the laboratory. The leaching experiments conducted for 24 hours showed that pH was generally more important than temperature in controlling the amount of metals leached out of the fly ash. However, at a given pH, rise in temperature led to different degree of (usually one to two fold) enhanced or reduced leaching of metals. Owing to amphoteric nature of oxides of Al, Cr, Pb and Zn, these metals often yielded typical pattern of increase and decrease in their concentrations with change in pH. The extent of leaching of Cr and Pb in our experiments suggests that decrease of pH to acidic range in the case of Pb and to neutral to acidic range for Cr over a long period of storage of fly ash at solid waste dumping site may facilitate leaching of these metals from fly ash, leading to contamination of groundwater to the level that exceeds beyond the level permitted by the environmental laws. 相似文献
