Kurt Gerdes

Scientific Opportunities for Monitoring at Environmental Remediation Sites (SOMERS): Integrated Systems-Based Approaches to Monitoring

Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

ADVANCED SIMULATION CAPABILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (ASCEM): AN OVERVIEW OF INITIAL RESULTS

ADVANCED SIMULATION CAPABILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (ASCEM): AN OVERVIEW OF INITIAL RESULTS Mark Williamson,* Juan Meza,† David Moulton,‡ Ian Gorton,§ Mark Freshley,§ Paul Dixon,‡ Roger Seitz,¶ Carl Steefel,† Stefan Finsterle,† Susan Hubbard,† Ming Zhu,* Kurt Gerdes,* Russ Patterson,# and Yvette T. Collazo* *U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Washington, DC, USA †Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA ‡Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA §Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA ¶Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC, USA #U.S. Department of Energy, Carlsbad, NM, USA The US Department Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) determined that uni- form application of advanced modeling in the subsurface could potentially help reduce the cost and risk associated with its environmental cleanup mission. In response to this determination, the EM Office of Technology Innovation and Development (OTID), Groundwater and Soil Remediation (GWS Simulation; Model; Groundwater; ASCEM BACKGROUND: INTRODUCTION TO EM NEEDS Fifty years of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research in the US during the Cold War generated large amounts of radioactive wastes, spent fuel, excess plutonium and uranium, thousands of contaminated facilities, and contaminated groundwater and soil. During most of that half century, the nation did not have the environmental regulatory structure or nu- clear waste remediation technologies that exist to- day. The result was a legacy of nuclear waste that was stored and disposed of in ways now considered unacceptable (11). At the end of US Government Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10), EM had 18 funded sites. Estimates report these sites to contain 40 million m 3 of contami- nated soil and 6.4 trillion L of contaminated groundwater (7). Current groundwater and soil re- mediation challenges that will continue to be ad- dressed in the next decade include cost-effective characterization, remediation, and monitoring of contaminants in the vadose zone and groundwater.

Near-optimal placement of monitoring wells for the detection of potential contaminant arrival in a regional aquifer at Los Alamos National Laboratory

This research presents a strategy to aid in the development of a decision support toolset in the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Monitoring (ASCEM) modeling platform for determining the near-optimal placement of monitoring wells. There are two scenarios that are studied in determining the near-optimal placement of monitoring wells: (1) placement of an entirely new network and (2) placement of additional monitoring wells within a previously placed network. The key technique utilized in this strategy minimizes the variance of spatial analysis using Geostatistical analysis and optimizes using Monte Carlo analysis. A clustering technique, namely k-means, is used in the second scenario to determine specific locations of importance relative to previously placed monitoring wells. This strategy is applied to chromium contamination at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The purpose is the determination of monitoring well placement to detect potential contaminant arrival in a regional aquifer located at Sandia and Mortandad Canyons.

Identification and Implementation of End-User Needs During Development of a State-of-the-Art Modeling Toolset

The U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE) Office of Environmental Management, Technology Innovation and Development is supporting a multi-National Laboratory effort to develop the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM). ASCEM is an emerging state-of-the-art scientific approach and software infrastructure for understanding and predicting contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. These modular and open-source high performance computing tools and user interfaces will facilitate integrated approaches that enable standardized assessments of performance and risk for EM cleanup and closure decisions. The ASCEM team recognized that engaging end-users in the ASCEM development process would lead to enhanced development and implementation of the ASCEM toolsets in the user community. End-user involvement in ASCEM covers a broad spectrum of perspectives, including: performance assessment (PA) and risk assessment practitioners, research scientists, decision-makers, oversight personnel, and regulators engaged in the US DOE cleanup mission. End-users are primarily engaged in ASCEM via the ASCEM User Steering Committee (USC) and the ‘user needs interface’ task. Future plans also include user involvement in demonstrations of the ASCEM tools. This paper will describe the details of how end users have been engaged in the ASCEM program and will demonstrate how this involvement has strengthened both the tool development and community confidence. ASCEM tools requested by end-users specifically target modeling challenges associated with US DOE cleanup activities. The demonstration activities involve application of ASCEM tools and capabilities to representative problems at DOE sites. Selected results from the ASCEM Phase 1 demonstrations are discussed to illustrate how capabilities requested by end-users were implemented in prototype versions of the ASCEM tool.Copyright

The United States Department of Energy's Environmental Management Program

The year 2009 marks 20 years since the Environmental Management program was first established in the Department of Energy. At that time, nearly 50 years of nuclear activity had left a legacy that included nuclear waste and environmental contamination at more than 100 sites across the United States. The extent of the risk to our citizens and communities was unknown, and certainly many of the processes and technologies to reduce that risk had not yet been invented. Since then, the Department of Energy has closed 86 of 108 sites originally assigned to the program nationwide. The Department of Energy has packaged and safely stored the nation’s entire excess plutonium inventory. The Department has pioneered new technologies that have allowed progress in retrieving millions of liters of tank waste and safely disposing of tens of thousands of cubic meters of transuranic waste. In Fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone, the Department of Energy demolished approximately 500 buildings (nuclear, radioactive, and industrial) as part of our decontamination and decommissioning projects. Finally, there have been great strides in restoring groundwater contaminated with radionuclides using innovative treatment systems. In August 2005, a rigorous project management system was instituted. This Department of Energy program was built on the principle of prioritizing risk reduction supported by our four guiding tenets of safety, performance, clean-up, and closure. The mission activities at our clean-up sites are targeted at our highest risk activities. In planning its environmental clean-up efforts and developing the budget for those activities, the Department seeks to focus on work that will produce the greatest environmental benefit and the largest amount of risk reduction.

Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management: Current Status and Future Applications

The U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM), Office of Soil and Groundwater (EM-12), is supporting development of the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM). ASCEM is a state-of-the-art scientific tool and approach that is currently aimed at understanding and predicting contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. ASCEM is a modular and open source high-performance computing tool. It will be used to facilitate integrated approaches to modeling and site characterization, and provide robust and standardized assessments of performance and risk for EM cleanup and closure activities.The ASCEM project continues to make significant progress in development of capabilities, with current emphasis on integration of capabilities in FY12. Capability development is occurring for both the Platform and Integrated Toolsets and High-Performance Computing (HPC) multiprocess simulator. The Platform capabilities provide the user interface and tools for end-to-end model development, starting with definition of the conceptual model, management of data for model input, model calibration and uncertainty analysis, and processing of model output, including visualization. The HPC capabilities target increased functionality of process model representations, toolsets for interaction with Platform, and verification and model confidence testing. The integration of the Platform and HPC capabilities were tested and evaluated for EM applications in a set of demonstrations as part of Site Applications Thrust Area activities in 2012.The current maturity of the ASCEM computational and analysis capabilities has afforded the opportunity for collaborative efforts to develop decision analysis tools to support and optimize radioactive waste disposal. Recent advances in computerized decision analysis frameworks provide the perfect opportunity to bring this capability into ASCEM. This will allow radioactive waste disposal to be evaluated based on decision needs, such as disposal, closure, and maintenance. Decision models will be used in ASCEM to identify information/data needs, and model refinements that might be necessary to effectively reduce uncertainty in waste disposal decisions. Decision analysis models start with tools for framing the problem, and continue with modeling both the science side of the problem (for example, inventories, source terms, fate and transport, receptors, risk, etc.), and the cost side of the problem, which could include costs of implementation of any action that is chosen (e.g., for disposal or closure), and the values associated with those actions. The cost side of the decision problem covers economic, environmental and societal costs, which correspond to the three pillars of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental). These tools will facilitate stakeholder driven decision analysis to support optimal sustainable solutions in ASCEM.Copyright

Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM)

The United States Department Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) determined that uniform application of advanced modeling in the subsurface could help reduce the cost and risks associated with its environmental cleanup mission. In response to this determination, the EM Office of Technology Innovation and Development (OTID), Groundwater and Soil Remediation (GW&S) began the program Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM). ASCEM is a state-of-the-art scientific tool and approach for integrating data and scientific understanding to enable prediction of contaminant fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. This initiative supports the reduction of uncertainties and risks associated with EM’s environmental cleanup and closure programs through better understanding and quantifying the subsurface flow and contaminant transport behavior in complex geological systems. This involves the long-term performance of engineered components, including cementitious materials in nuclear waste disposal facilities that may be sources for future contamination of the subsurface. This paper describes the ASCEM tools and approach and the ASCEM programmatic accomplishments completed in 2010 including recent advances and technology transfer.Copyright

Integrated Strategy to Address Hanford’s Deep Vadose Zone Remediation Challenges

A vast majority of Hanford’s remaining in-ground contaminants reside in the vadose zone of the Central Plateau, where reprocessing operations occurred. The vadose zone is comprised of about 75 meters of water-unsaturated sediments above groundwater. These contaminants have, and continue to release into groundwater that discharges to the Columbia River. If left untreated, these contaminants could remain a threat for centuries. Much of this contamination resides deep in the vadose zone, below the effective depth of tradition surface remedy influence. In 2008, the Department of Energy initiated deep vadose zone treatability testing to seek remedies for technetium-99 and uranium contamination. These tests include the application of desiccation for technetium-99 and reactive gas technologies for uranium. To complement these efforts, the Department of Energy has initiated a “defense-in-depth” approach to address the unique challenges for characterization and remediation of the deep vadose zone. This defense-in-depth approach will implement multiple approaches to understand and control contaminant flux from the deep vadose zone to the groundwater. Among these approaches is an increased investment in science and technology solutions to resolve deep vadose zone challenges including characterization, prediction, remediation, and monitoring.