A two-tiered approach to reactive transport: application to Sr mobility under variable pH

One benefit of a coupled geochemistry/transport approach is that interactions between chemical constituents that can change the mobility of species (such as pH) can be treated explicitly, rather than lumping all of the geochemistry into a single term (i.e., the retardation factor). A two-tiered approach to modeling coupled geochemistry/transport is presented here, which allows a comparison of the results of different methods as well as better efficiency in modeling time. The codes ParSSim, a coupled transport code for supercomputers, and PHREEQC, an advective geochemistry code, were used to model Sr mobility under varying pH. The problem was based on liquid low level radioactive waste that was disposed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) in a highly alkaline solution to try to enhance precipitation and sorption. Interactions with carbonate rock and ground water lowered the pH and led to mobilization of radionuclides such as 90Sr. Simulation of contaminant migration in this mixing environment requires a coupled geochemistry and transport model. The interplay between propagation of a pH front (which was retarded) and propagation of the Sr front leads to a fast-moving pulse of Sr as well as a strongly retarded front of Sr. This behavior could not have been predicted by a geochemistry or a transport code alone