Assessment of radionuclide transport uncertainty in the unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain

The present study assesses the uncertainty of flow and radionuclide transport in the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain using a Monte Carlo method. Matrix permeability, porosity, and sorption coefficient are considered random. Different from previous studies that assume distributions of the parameters, the distributions are determined in this study by applying comprehensive transformations and rigorous statistics to on-site measurements of the parameters. The distribution of permeability is further adjusted based on model calibration results. Correlation between matrix permeability and porosity is incorporated using the Latin Hypercube Sampling method. After conducting 200 Monte Carlo simulations of three-dimensional unsaturated flow and radionuclide transport for conservative and reactive tracers, the mean, variances, and 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles for quantities of interest (e.g., matrix liquid saturation and water potential) are evaluated. The mean and 50th percentile are used as the mean predictions, and their associated predictive uncertainties are measured by the variances and the 5th and 95th percentiles (also known as uncertainty bounds). The mean predictions of matrix liquid saturation and water potential are in reasonable agreement with corresponding measurements. The uncertainty bounds include a large portion of the measurements, suggesting that the data variability can be partially explained by parameter uncertainty. The study illustrates propagation of predictive uncertainty of percolation flux, increasing downward from repository horizon to water table. Statistics from the breakthrough curves indicate that transport of the reactive tracer is delayed significantly by the sorption process, and prediction on the reactive tracer is of greater uncertainty than on the conservative tracer because randomness in the sorption coefficient increases the prediction uncertainty. Uncertainty in radionuclide transport is related to uncertainty in the percolation flux, suggesting that reducing the former entails reduction in the latter.