Geoscience Education in the Mountain State: CATS Applied Geology Telecourse, Spring 2000, Show 6 Transcript

CATS Telecourse
Applied Geology
April 4, 2000

(Due to technical difficulties this is joined in progress)

Dr. Bob: Is there anything else we needed to do? Any questions that have come in?

Dr. Deb: A couple of things. One, make sure, facilitators, that you're post tests are completed as soon as you watch this broadcast. Immediately following the broadcast administer those post tests and mail them directly to Phyllis. You have gotten an e-mail directing you to do that. Another thing, the field trip, in case you 4 credit people are wondering what's going on with that, you'll be receiving a mailing regarding that after Tom and I get back from Orlando. We want to remind you in the fall we offer the physical geology course again. It's a modified format, a little different this time. It will involve Dr. Bob and myself. This time we're going to include Dr. Jack Renton. Those of you that have been watching the adjuncts have seen Dr. Bob and Dr. Renton together, so next semester we're going to try and pulling Dr. Renton on with us and see how that goes. Be sure to tune in to that.

I've been getting several e-mails about the questions 4 and 5 on the last quiz. There seems to be some confusion. They don't really quite get it.

Dr. Bob: Those types of questions are really based on thinking about energy. Let me just remind you about sand-sized grains. Sand-sized grains, largest 2 mm in diameter and the break down in 5 fold: a very coarse, coarse, medium, fine, and very fine. The particle size for the smallest, sand-sized, is 1/16th mm in diameter. Think of these as reflecting energy. The more the energy the greater the particle size that can be moved. Therefore think of the energy as a total package. That velocity of the fluid in motion alone is not sufficient to answer the question. Wind, for example, can be 200 miles an hour in a hurricane. The water velocities never get any where near wind velocities are and glaciers move very, very slowly. Ice, water, and wind all have different viscosities and densities. The densities combine with the velocities create the potential for the particles to be moved. Particles are moved and some are left behind, or they lag behind, because the energy was insufficient to move them along. When you look at things like a dune, or a beach, what particle size might you suggest? Just in a relative sense. If you look at the size of the particles in a sand dune as compared and contrasted to those on the beach, and then where on the beach? High tide? Low tide? May be even higher than high tide, a storm level. Those of you who have been to beaches a number of times and often the same beach, several years, you realize that if you go after a major storm, a noreaster for example along the North Carolina coast, will really rip the beach. You get to an area that you had enjoyed sand and you're there early in the springtime and it's a very coarse material. You wonder where all this material came from. There are no major rivers bringing larger particles but all the other materials been moved off. It will take time, sometimes years, for the sand to slowly, under fair weather conditions, march back up from deeper water. It steepens the offshore environment. A storm, really interesting, will rip at the beach and take the material out and flatten out the beach. As the beach gets flattened it diminishes the strength of those storm waves so that there becomes, at least under the conditions of the storm, something of a balance. The storms gone, the beach is flat. In fair weather conditions, grains of sand come from down below and march up onto the beach. Gradually there's a steepening and the beach, the recreational beach, gets bigger. Then, wind comes along and blows grains to form the dunes. The simple scenario is, that the grains that form the dune have to come from the beach somewhere. What grains are going to be moved? The real big clunky pieces? Do you find big oyster shells or other types of invertebrate shells in the sand dunes? Or are the sand dunes of finer grain? Even though the wind velocities are very high the carrying capacity of the wind is very much diminished as compared to the carrying capacity of the long shore drift and the beach and the wave action. Think about that. Only in a relative sense, you don't have to have the preciseness that you might otherwise look for. Think about the overall dynamics of the system. With respect to the organic materials, is there much organic material on the beach or is it pretty well oxidized and deteriorated and eaten by other things on the beach? Back in the Sound, if you have been there, where do you get all the muck and the high organic compounds and content? In a sand dune is there much organic material? Some may be blown in there but it's not an environment if it's an active dune field. It's not a very great environment for organic material to be growing.

Dr. Deb: That's right, if it is it's not active.

Dr. Bob: That's right. It's being covered. Even then it's just the grasses and the roots that get down in.

Dr. Deb: If you go to Kittyhawk now, it's not an active dune because there is grasses growing all over it. It's really not moving.

Dr. Bob: The same thing with Chincoteague, the old lighthouse is up on a dune. Unless you really look at it and think about it and try to get the dimensions and put a shovel in it you'd find out it's all sand. What's the particle size of the sand? That's what I'm trying to get to. Don't over read that question. Don't feel that you have to draw a histogram of each of those 5 sand-sized grains. You could create a histogram if I took you out there with a set of those sieves and we actually took a hundred grams and sieved it and had a balance along and weighed it, then you would be able to create a histogram of what the total contribution in each of the 5 sand-sized grains. I'm just asking you to think about it trying to get some relative sense.

Dr. Deb: One of the last announcements, we received an e-mail from Bill Moore, who has pictures that he's posted on the web of an environmental field trip that he took with the students. To access these go to ememories.com and there's a search engine there. If you put in William Moore it will come up with 3 choices and then you can click on "Environmental Field Trip" and that's his field trip. This is a way of posting you're pictures on the web. They'll develop the film for you and post them free and you can tell them which one you want copies of. They can put them on cups and calendars. It's a promotion for them but in the meantime you get your albums posted. Check that out. You can leave messages there to his students and they'd love to hear from you. Then you can investigate doing that yourself.

Dr. Bob: Now, let's go to the outline of what we plan to accomplish today. The major topic "Disposal of Radioactive Waste." However, we have two of the WV sites where there were site studies and case histories that we wanted to cover. In a way, although we didn't specifically plan to have them carry over to this week, these are very nice introduction into what we are talking about in radioactive waste. Even though these are not specifically radioactive waste they do relate to some problems that we have and the problems are relatively similar. It's just the radioactive waste has a limited number of materials that we have to deal with. Then we'll get into some specifics. We'll talk about the fundamental issues and the radioactive decay, the products, half-life, especially with studies that you can do in the classroom, high level waste (HLW) and low level waste (LLW). We will feature high level waste today but we will make mention of low level waste. Six media for geologic disposal of radioactive material. In other words, six types of rocks and six specific types of setting. We'll also talk about some alternative opportunities and whether they make much sense or not. We'll have a break and come back in looking at some general sites around the United States. The choices for the disposal of high level waste and the final three sites and to those in the running and then the Yucca Mountain project, obviously that must have been the site chosen in Nevada. Otherwise known as the Nevada Test Site. Then if we do get a chance, we'll just mention a little bit about radon because it's a separate issue but related. Pertinent to West Virginia and also to the radioactive series with respect to uranium.

Completion of the other cases. TNT site, Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Deb, you have on the computer something about Super Fund sites.

Dr. Deb: This is the EPA's site and you can visit individual states. They provide you with a site name, the address, the city, the county, and the zip. If your curious to see if there's some pertinent research that your students can do on a Super Fund site in your county and area, you can scan through here and see if there's anything close by to make it a little bit more relevant to your home county.

Dr. Bob: As you can see there are quite a number of sites that are included. A variety of counties that are included in that. Whether or not they have done a great deal at any of these sites is not the issue. This is in Region III, WV is in Region III of the EPA so that you have to get into EPA.gov and then get to Region III and move down in the menu in order to find the sites.

Dr. Deb: They have the city of Fairmont in Harrison County.

Dr. Bob: You can pull this up and find out if there is a hazardous cleanup site. These are the Super Fund sites and we'll get to that in a moment. I have a few of the salient features. This is a World War II site for the war effort and at it's peak production of TNT stands for trinitrotoluene. They were producing 700,000 tons a day in the peak production. An amazing amount of TNT to be moving about as well as producing. In 1945, the site was decontaminated and decommissioned. But to date, this is from the project, over 200 million dollars, overall, has been spent in 55 years and the site still has some issues to address. What happens is that nitric acid and sulphuric acid, used in the batch process, and toluene undergoes nitration. That's how you get the TNT. TNT's been around for a long time. It's sometimes a tricky substance to work with. It can deteriorate, it can be hard to handle, but if its fresh and handled well, not sweating, no problems.

In 1981 material known as red water was found on the surface. It's not nice, it can't be good. We can't find any further information of this. The overall area, there's been a wildlife station, part of the WVU Experimental Station, Mason County Airport, National Guard facilities, county fair grounds, crop land, pastures, forests, residential communities, in part and in whole. In other words, its was a vast acreage tract. In later days, it's become multiple use. Traditionally this is what happens to sites like this. There's a new word if you haven't heard it already, brown fields. If it's not a Super Fund site, this one happens to be a Super Fund site, but other sites are brown fields because they have problems, but they do not qualify under the Super Fund site designation. But municipalities have a real interest in these areas because they could be turned over in real new economic development to meet the current needs. Some of these brown field sites, old plants, companies that are gone, railroad facilities and the siding facilities, lots of potential problems coming out of the break boxes and everything else along the sidings.

In 1983, this site in Point Pleasant was 84^th on the National Priorities List (NPL) of CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980). In other words, whose to blame, who pays, and who gets the value then, the compensation. The short term for this was the Super Fund site. The Federal government has touted this Super Fund site, lots of money available in this, but in reality not a whole heck of a lot has really, really, really, been accomplished nationwide in 20 years. It's not been an enormous success story. The legislation does live with this.

In 1999, there was an update of contamination. The cleanup continues for 12 years. What they have been doing is flashing and flaming off material. There are aquifers, sand and gravel and deeper, so that's there's always concern about leakage into the deeper aquifer and then a toxic swamp. The materials are not nice at the surface. So that was a quick and very interesting and comprehensive report. The information seems to be very forthcoming because it's a Federal site and a lot of information was available there. Very nicely done report also. We'll mention it later as to how that kind of relates to what we're talking about in radioactive waste in anticipation of a later current day situation. Then looking at the water quality in the Potomac. This was a very general situation. From Fairfax Stone to Harpers Ferry. I've just uncovered the entire list of things that get into the water. The Potomac has many tributaries, quite a number of them come from WV. There's a significant amount of problems. Nitrogen, phosphorous, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, oil, sulphur, and still found in the water but banned, it must be coming out...remember the Potomac River is getting water from the ground water. It is an influent stream, therefore there is still a potential for leachage out of the soils to enter into the water. Chlordane and DDT (hasn't been used in a long, long time). Of course, the ever present mercury and lead.

This project was looking at the very broad issues of a very large river. Since it was such an important river, the Potomac, even though it was not that navigable under the current situation, the water quality issues of major rivers are extremely important. The reason this has linkage to what we are talking about today is that the Columbia River and the Snake River, but especially the Columbia River, is along one of the bomb factory sites in Richland, WA. The Colorado River has as one of its tributaries a river that runs past a tailings pile from uranium workings in Mohab, UT. Realize this, that water from the Colorado River is used not only by cities that directly border the Colorado River, but Phoenix, Tuscan, and Los Angeles draw from the Colorado River. We're not talking trivial population sites here. We are talking about water that can carry materials as part of their load that are related to the last 60 years of exploring in more serious detail the amazing aspects of radioactive materials. Naturally radioactive materials collected first and in the laboratory the ones that are created radioactive materials.

That leads us then to the point on our outline where we wanted to just re-emphasize again that there are fundamental issues: surface water, ground water, these are migrating materials. Air, blowing wind, if there is a ponding of waste material and it dries out, is it possible to pick up as aerosols then be distributed. On a field trip with Marion County and we saw one of the old copper mine areas. That was a real problem in those settling tanks in the basins. If they let them dry out then the aerosols get to be a potential problem too. There also exists in the history of working with radioactive materials the unfortunate situation that they took the waste materials after they obtained as much uranium out of it that they could and the forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, said, "These are good waste materials, why don't you use them to make concrete. Use them to make aggregate. Make bricks, build your homes out of it". Of course what happened then is some of the poor folks on the economic standards were using that material. They made their homes out of that brick but there was still enough material so that radon, for example, would be emitted in the long term half-life and some of the streets in Denver and Salt Lake City, and other towns used this material. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to go back in and clean up some of those homes, take down some, replace the material. You have a long term thing. You have to be able to look around corners. We haven't been very good about that. During WW II there was a far greater issue on our plate then thinking about what's going to happen in the longer term. One of the WW II situations was the creation of a great deal of chlorine compounds, the salt deposits were in central New York. The cheap electricity was in Niagra Falls and thus a major chemical company, Hooker Chemical, decided that was a great combination. What was the story of all that, and where did it lead?

Dr. Deb: The whole story actually begins in the late 1800s with a fellow named William T. Love who decided that he was going to put in a hydroelectric plant for a model city adjacent to Niagra. He was going to bypass the Cascades. He built this canal, hence the name Love Canal. Love Canal was named for the fellow who built it, of course as most dreams happen, he ran out of money and the canal sat and became a local hole. The kids enjoyed it for several years and then in the 20s the City of Niagara actually initiated dumping into the canal in one end and the kids continued to play in the other end. They sold the canal to the municipality who then turned it into a landfill. Included in this landfill was the army who dumped Manhattan Project waste in there as well. This was the beginning in the 1920s by the City of Niagara itself. We tend to blame Hooker Chemicals for all of this but they really didn't initiate this. Hooker Chemicals didn't come through until the 1940s. They dumped until about 1954. They purchased the canal and dumped about 21,000 tons of organic solvents, acids, pesticides in the north section, in the south section and in the central section the kids still swam. Then they started having problems with the canal. Fires started to erupt in the canal itself and flames would shoot as high as the houses that were starting to be built around the canal area. In the early 1950s, the canal was starting to fill up so they decided to cover it and seal it and they sealed it with a clay barrier thinking that none of the chemicals, pesticides that were stored in barrels that were now rusting and leaking would then escape into the water table. They put a fairly thick clay barrier over that and sold the area to the Niagara school system for $1.00. Most of us think that's a travesty and how terrible of the Hooker Chemical Company to have done that. There's some part of that story that's not told very often and that is that actually the school system wanted that land. They asked Hooker Chemical to sell them that land for a cheap price and Hooker Chemical turned them down. They said it's not a safe place, this is a dump. You don't want to build a school here. The school actually threatened them with eminent domain and to take the land anyway. Hooker Chemicals decided to give in for whatever reason and did sell the property for $1.00, but brought the school officials on, showed them the dump, showed them where they had been dumping and also said that once they handed the land over that it was no longer their problem and that they were going to give up all liability. They had an agreement that while they were building the school there they could continue to dump. The school was built in 1954. By 1958 you can see that there were reports of skin irritations already by students playing in the area. Between the 50s and 70s there was a high incidence of subsidence where the dump had caved in and the drums were beginning to surface throughout the area. In 1977 the real problems began when heavy rainfalls, actually '75, '76 and the problem was really noticed in '77. The heavy rainfall saturated the ground and bad smells started to occur in the area. Chemical residues were bubbling up to the surface. People were noticing that their foundations were rotting, several of the homes when the basements went in broke the clay barrier to the dump and so there were many, many problems that were occurring. By 1978 they realized that they were in serious trouble. They closed the 99^th Street school and they closed rings 1 and 2 around the canal. The houses that were in the perimeter. Then President Jimmy Carter began allocating funds for cleanup. By 1982, 248 of the 400 chemicals dumped there were identified. They had incidences of miscarriage, birth defects, low birth weights, and high incidences of liver and kidney damage. Its interesting that the organs used to detoxify the system were the ones that were affected. As a result of this, this is where the Super Fund came into being. Most of us, most my age can remember it and are aware that this is going on. It hit the media fairly loudly. Cited in the book, "A Civil Action," it was cited as a precedent. They spent around 250 million dollars to clean up this site and it's now considered clean and they are now selling houses on this site.

Dr. Bob: A couple of years ago, really bizarre, my in-laws and all the relatives live up there, I was up there a lot. The Hooker Chemical company, the tanks and everything was greens, oranges, and reds. This was very much an industrial area from Niagara, New York on up the river. They hauled logs in there, there was a pulp plant and back in the 60s and early 70s there was all kinds of aromas that you could smell if the wind was blowing because of the very strong pickling acids and the cleaning acids for the paper pulp. It was quite, quite an area. Of course, as an outgrowth still from the 1940s, it was an extremely important region with respect to the chemical industry and the cheap electricity. Then when you drove past the site they had it all barricaded and barb wired, keep out signs, and it was quite a site to see. All the houses, as the years went by, without any attempt to keep the houses in good working order. A house just gets ill without people living in it. No heat and it starts to deteriorate. That maintenance is lost. They took soils away, they burned materials, they refilled and it's been a couple years now that they sold some of those properties back.

Dr. Deb: It's a very interesting history. It's easy to find materials on the web. Just type in Love Canal in any of those search engines.

We should mention a couple of the web sites that I came across for you. Two of the sites that you might consider visiting. You should be aware of our own site with the WV Division of Environmental Protection. It will tell you a little bit more about GPS and Project WET and those types of things but the really impressive site is the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection. This is an interesting site that has lots for teachers. If you get a chance check out this web site or have your students check it out.

Dr. Bob: While we're on that line of giving these we should do these others. The Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov.

Just for your notes, all in one place, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC.

Dr. Deb: It's not a great site to visit but if you need to go visit it, go ahead. It's not user friendly and it's not designed for teachers or educators.

Dr. Bob: Then, the Yucca Mountain Project. Part of the YMP, government always has the initials. That's got some things that could be very useful.

Let's get on to our issues with respect to radioactive material. Radioactive decay is in one sense, there are only 3 things you have to deal with, so it is a much narrower scope then say all hazardous materials. The 3 particles are: alpha, beta, and gamma. An alpha particle is a particle. It's a chunky old particle. What it is really is is the helium nucleus stripped of it's electrons. It has an atomic mass of 4, it's 2 protons and 2 neutrons in a tight, chubby little particle. It's not too dangerous unless you have cuts. Paper blocks it and your skin blocks it.

Dr. Deb: The problem is if you inhale it.

Dr. Bob: Yes, if it's in your lungs then you don't have that protective coating. That can be a problem. That's why radon is included in our discussion.

Beta particle is really an electron. It has a charge of -1, it's very small. It's a little bit more of a problem. It's not a typical electron that you might see in ionization. This electron came from a destruction in the nucleus. A neutron went to a proton by losing an electron. It's a kind of violent thought and consideration. Not so nice.

Gamma is radiation in the electromagnetic wave spectrum. This is more serious stuff still.

Dr. Deb: Lead. That's the only thing blocking this.

Dr. Bob: A thin piece of aluminum will stop the beta but the gamma radiation you want lead shielding between you and the gamma radiation.

Dr. Deb: Which is why you wear lead vests when you go into the dentists office and they are giving you x-rays. They don't want to subject you to any unnecessary radiation.

Dr. Bob: The stories early on when dentists starting discovering the use of "x-rays" and we're slipping into a comparison situation with respect to x-rays. The dentists themselves often held the plates in the mouth of the patient and there were many dentists that lost fingers to cancer as a result of continual exposure.

Radiation then was a vast new area. It was incredible. The work with radioactivity started with Renkin with the x-rays and others by accident. A piece of pitch blend left too close to photographic material and it exposed it and he wondered why. Then Madame Curie and her daughter died essentially aftermass and effects of radiation and cancer from exposure to the radiation.

Dr. Deb: As a matter of fact, her notes are so irradiated that they are still contained in a lead box. They can't take them out.

Dr. Bob: I didn't know that. In looking at natural radioactivity we start talking about half life. Deb, why don't you bring us up to date in a neat little half life thing that can be used in the classroom.

Dr. Deb: The classic half life thing, and I can't think of a better way of doing this is finding something with two sides. It might be a coin or an M & M. Something that's got two different sides. You put a hundred of them in a box, you shake them up and you take out the ones that are heads or you take out the ones with the M showing on the M & M's. There is an M & M half life site: imsa.edu. There's directions there for the 8 step activity. Essentially what you're doing is the students count how many they've taken out. They shake the box up again without returning the ones already taken out and then they open it up and take out the M's again and count those up. What you get statistically, of course, a 50-50 chance of each M & M landing on the M side up. They do this until there is nothing left or you can do 8 tries. Then they graph this. You graph the results and what you can do to make the results more accurate, every group puts up their results and then you average those out and graph those results. You get a more accurate representation of the half life. As you graph this you ask, now, if you have an isotope with 75% remaining how many half lives have you gone through and they can look at their graph and determine that. It's a really nice mathematical application, graphical representation, and modeling.

Dr. Bob: It's a statistical situation. Many folks think, if you had an electron microscope that could get down and watch this little rascal, how long would it take. A long, long time potentially. It's a statistical situation that in each half life, one half of all the participating naturally radioactive isotope atoms that you're looking at will decay but in theory you just keep going and going and going. Material such as carbon has a relatively short half life, 5,736 or something like that. They refine it a little bit. What happens then is that after a long period of time, 50,000 years, 60,000 years, you go through so many half lives that we have enormous difficulty in detection of what might still be radioactive. Talk to your students, say, look, the coal in WV is 200 million years old, do you think that any carbon 14 in that coal can be detected? The answer is no. As a matter of fact, good old WV coal could be used to calibrate the equipment that is used for Carbon 14 dating because it is radiometrically dead. It does not emit from carbon, notice I said that real carefully, it does not emit from any carbon isotopes natural radioactivity. There may be other materials in the coal. You have to isolate the carbon from all other atoms and elements in the coal you're talking about a different type of situation. Half life is given to us by the physicists, they developed the dynamics. In 1950 this was used for the first time and refined to start looking at natural materials that contained radioactive isotopes. It has just revolutionized aspects of geology. Until that time we were prettily well looking at a relative age date. We could look at the fossils and say such and such evolutionary staging but we didn't have a real good feel for the absolute number of years between. Utilizing naturally radioactive isotopes in rocks in different ways allowed us to create absolute time scale. We can use uranium in the uranium to lead series. The radioactive carbon series. Rubidium Strontium (sp.) series, and the potassium argon series. The potassium argon series is really interesting because it's a one step decay. It goes to an inner gas. It is very common in using for dating of volcanic rocks. You have to make assumptions. You always worry about assumptions. You assume that all the argon in the rock is a result of being trapped in there as radioactive decay from potassium 40. That isotope of potassium that is naturally radioactive. The other assumption is that the argon doesn't leak out. When we talk about some volcanic rocks as a medium in which to put radioactive material, some volcanic rocks are very lossy, they've got holes in them. Vesicular basalt has the potential for any argon that may have been created to escape into the atmosphere. The rock will look a lot younger then it actually is. You have to make many, many assumptions in using natural radioactivity but with the half life in hand and a certain number of radioactive isotopes we can do marvelous things.

Dr. Deb: If the half life is 1.4 million years and you're not around long enough to watch it, how do you know the half life is that long? Kids ask that all the time.

Dr. Bob: What do you answer?

Dr. Deb: That's a good question.

Dr. Bob: The methods of determining the specific half life is something that I do not know the exact details as to how it was originally calculated.

Dr. Deb: I always say it's beyond the scope of this course.

Dr. Bob: What I have here is a list. These are some of the radioisotopes important in waste disposal: Uranium 238, uranium 235, uranium 234, plutonium, radiocarbon, cesium, tritium (has a half life of 12 years). What's critical here is cesium because in the classification of things with 30 years. Everything with less than a 30 year half life is called low level waste. Everything with greater than 30 year half life is high level waste. The removal of low level waste from the active and accessible environmental is predicated on 300 years, 10 times the low level waste exposure. For high level waste we can't even approach 10 times some of these. It is set as a limit at least 10,000 years of removal from the accessible environment and the 300 years for the low level waste. That's the measure, that's what's ahead of us, high level waste and low level waste. The disposal of low level waste can be done, it's bulky stuff. It's packaging and materials and the handling of radioisotopes, for example, used in medicine. There's a lot of material that has accumulated for low level waste, much less for high level waste. The bulk of the low level waste is to be store for a relatively brief time. What the federal government suggested is why not create compacts, states joining together? As you can imagine, you get a couple of states together and you wonder who gets to hold the package. It's always the pointing. At the present time the Appalachian Compact includes Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Of course, who does the finger get pointed at as being...Pennsylvania. Immediately excluded would be cities, wildlife areas, parks, state, local, surface mined areas, with not a lot of areas left. As a result, while they supposed to be studies to find sites in Pennsylvania, sluggish doesn't express how slow this process is ongoing. They have identified a company years ago to do this sort of thing and it's just going nowhere. It may well be that this compact just dissolves and WV has to find it's own location for isolating the materials.

Texas went alone, it's by far and away, they have a site and it's well along. It's probably accepting material now. Texas was leading the nation in handling of that material in a geologic environment.

Early on, the developers of the bomb realized early on that this was going to be a real problem. What are we going to do with the waste? Let's look at geologic repositories or alternatives. What are some of the alternatives? They said, space...shoot it into the sun. Put it back where the whole universe's example of a nuclear furnace is. As we came along, even in the 1970s, this isn't a real good idea. We don't get all of our rockets out of our atmosphere. That's not going to be too good. The cost as well. But the safety factor just isn't there. Aha, let's put it somewhere where it's frozen....nobody ever goes there, Antarctica. Well, it's a treaty nation. It's a treaty continent and besides as we watch in the last 20 years it's getting warmer and warmer. So Antarctica was just not going to be a good example. How about the sea floor? You don't see it. Out of sight out of mind. Dilution is the solution to pollution. Naw, the real problem is corrosion and also in England they have been taking the spoils and the fly ash from burning coal for power and dumping it in the sea. Some of the fish and critters are radioactive because the waste is radioactive. Uranium gets fixated into carbon compounds and therefore coal can have some radioactivity associated with it. Not good, plain old sea bed not so good. Even if we put it in barrels, the barrels might corrode. Some say, with the development of geology we have an even better possibility for this type of sea bed situation. We'll put it in a ever loving subduction zone. We'll recycle it back down in and then somebody somewhere along the line might get it back as a volcano but that's a long time! Cooler heads prevailed in this and they said look, how long does a subduction zone, that materials moving at about the rate of a fingernail growth, a year, we're going to have that barrel exposed to corrosion on the sea floor for a long, long time. Besides how do we know when the forces start working on that barrel and squish it, not good. These types of things didn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. Ok, we will look for a geologic setting on land and the types of materials, there are 6. In one case, one of these are a duplicate because of the different geologic setting. Granite, that's a solid rock, isn't very permeable at all. It has uranium naturally in it in some cases. If we can drill into the granite we can put it there. Canada, for example, is looking at granite. Sweden, the Scandinavian countries would look at granite as a repository by building a large underground storage facility. Basalt, lot's of basalt around on the surface. The whole sea floor is basalt but we're not talking about sea floor basalt, we're talking about continental basalt. In the United States granite could be found in a couple of states. Minnesota, Maine, North Carolina, Georgia, Vermont, New Hampshire, and along the crest and parts of the Rockies, that big batholiths in Idaho and Sierra, Nevada batholiths in California, in Wisconsin. Granite is fairly common, basalt the biggest area of basalt is in Idaho and Washington. This, as we looked at it in 1970 and 1980, we said, this has some merit. Because the bomb factory in Richland, Washington is on basalt. An explosive volcano, it's acid igneous rock and it's welded together because it was hot. It can vary but it can be very, very thick. Some of these deposits in the American west are thousands and thousands feet of tuff over broad areas. This may have real merit. Those are the igneous rocks. Then the sedimentary rocks. Shale, some European countries are looking at shale. In the United States, our shale in the eastern U.S. is usually all folded up because it got caught in the vise between Africa and North American during plate tectonics. That's not going to be a real good possibility, also black shales can have uranium in it. Then salt, salt would not be found where there is ground water. It would dissolve. The primary constituent of salt is the mineral halite NaCl. There are two types and this is where we get the 6 geologic medium. The two types are bedded salt, meaning that the layers are horizontal beneath Detroit and northeastern Ohio. Syracuse, New York, in Kansas, are bedded salt layers. In Texas, a variety of areas out west where there are bedded salts. Then, where there has been deformation the salt sometimes, because of its low density, is forced up into a dome, a salt dome. Actually in the Gulf coastal area punctures the rocks above it. The salt may have been buried 70,000 or 80,000 feet and because of it's low density and variations underneath it just gets punctured and it rises as a salt dome.

[BREAK]

Dr. Bob: Ahh, back again, to explore the vagranties (sp.) and how they are going to handle all of this. If you're not familiar, this is an older edition but it's the Code of Federal Regulations otherwise known as CFR. This is a good thick book with little print. Always beware of little print. The Code of Federal Regulations is constantly updated and revised and this one, CRF 10. This particular one is all about energy. In CFR 10 there is a package, 10 CFR 60 and that's all the nuclear reaction material and what they are going to do with it all. The stage was set, the federal government said we're going to find a repository in the U.S. and the Dept. of Energy, DOE, was going to identify all the different rock types we mentioned, look across the U.S. and decide which ones will be very useful. Characterize and bring that list down to three and start characterizing those sites and then move ahead and allow to be chosen one site. Then DOE would build the facility, would manage it as an accepted civilian radioactive waste. The DOE would close it and they would monitor the closure. Additional agencies would monitor the operation. The NRC would license the facility. The EPA would be looking over the shoulder constantly for exposures, problems, and so forth. Other federal agencies also had a role in this, the Dept. of Transportation, because material would have to be transferred. The U.S. G.S. because it's in a geologic environment. A secondary laboratory and other groups and private individuals, and private groups, the state in which it was to be located. They were going to have to oversee this. If it happened to be on Native American lands then Native American organizations would also be looking over the shoulder. It's a real complex plan of attack in trying to look for the sites. If you are interested in this here is an excellent publication, "The Nuclear Waste Primer." It is written by the League of Women Voter's therefore it is a very neutral playing field discussion of all the issues of both high level waste and low level waste. This particular book is a bit old in the tooth but it has been republished and additional materials in it but it is an excellent source of additional materials and the general statements.

Three sites were eventually to be looked at. In the U.S., Richland, WA. The government was already involved there. That was part of the major facility for obtaining plutonium for the first atomic bombs. At this site it was basalt. Richland, WA, as well as Kennewick, and some others, at this site they're right along the banks of the Columbia River. And a good deal of radioactive waste from that plant is already buried there. That was a Dept. of Defense type facility and realize that several of the other laboratories that were available are Dept. of Defense related and therefore their nuclear materials would be in a repository run by and for the government. Whereas the civilian generated high level nuclear waste primarily comes from nuclear power plants. We'll see in a moment why that is important and what they've had to do with it. As we move along in the staging and the examination of these sites, we come to find that there's leakage from the old facility of the 1940s and 50s into the ground water, not yet into the Columbia River, but it could. This then has a really serious dampening effect on using the Washington site as a possible repository. Deafsmith (sp.) County, TX, it's a bedded salt. Unfortunately, Deafsmith County, TX is one of the rich agriculture counties in the all the U.S. Not because they get so much rainfall right at that location but because there is a buried aquifer called the High Plains Aquifer, the Oglalah (sp.) formation. The High Plains Aquifer extends from the Dakotas all the way down to the south. It is tapped in TX to create this rich agricultural area. Wouldn't you know, if this bedded were to be used, you'd have to go through the aquifer and then excavate beneath it. The engineers suggested that they freeze the aquifer all around, we're looking at 10,000 years. Well, we'll have electricity for 10,000 years. No, we don't think so. The decision that was to come down on the last day of Regan's administration so that it didn't have any real political connotations but it was quite clear that things were not moving well at all. Finally, what was looked at was a mountain, Yucca Mountain, NV. It was at a facility that the federal government already owned. It's our land, we're going to use it. The NTS, Nevada Test Site. Things that have gone on at the NTS throughout the past 55 years, especially in those war years in the 1940s and early 50s, this is where so much of the testing was done with respect to a variety of things that our federal government had to have available in the event that war was going to be waged and rules may not have been followed. It is an area that has been a big broad area. The edge of it is about 70 miles from Las Vegas, NV. It is a location that sits on the border between Nevada and California. It is relatively close to Death Valley.

We're going to use the Yucca Mountain site. What are the other elements of all of this that we are needing to look at? Nuclear energy is America's second source of electricity. Coal is first by far. Nuclear about 20%. This needs to be tempered by the fact that this is older data back around 1990. We have not built a new nuclear power plant in about 16 years. It is quite likely in our lifetime that we'll never build another nuclear power plant. One of the reasons is there is a tremendous front end load of cost for testing the site, building the facility before you can get one kilowatt hour of energy out of it. They were about ready, Con Edison had one facility, the last one that was to come on line, and they had the permits to start running the test, but it was placed at the western end of Long Island. The NRC had one question, show us your evacuation route if something went wrong. Everybody from Long Island to get off, if they didn't take a boat or swim to Connecticut would have to come right past the plant.

Dr. Deb: Why didn't they ask that question earlier?

Dr. Bob: Chernobyl or Three Mile Island hadn't yet. Well before when they started the plant. It took so long to build the facility and start bringing it up, it just didn't wash so they abandoned it. They wrote off the loss. The federal court said it could be added in to the cost of electricity by the power plant for the people in that region. This is civilian generated nuclear waste. What do they do and what is the assembly? The fuel assembly, it's a rectangular type, very long, and it has fuel rods. Individual fuel rods are bundled together and this fuel assembly is a live one and they use purified uranium pellets. They create the pure uranium and then through the decay, this is where the plutonium will be concentrated. After awhile, these fuel rods are said to be spent or used up and need to be replaced. The new fuel rods are put in but the spent fuel rods are a great source of plutonium. Where are the spent fuel rods stored? In pools. They do have this blue color. This blue color is where the spent fuel rods are stored. The spent fuel rods contain high levels nuclear waste materials and originally the federal government was supposed to build a processing plant to clean the old spent fuel rods because we could get pure uranium back out of it. Most of the uranium is still there in the fuel rods, it's just that the rods are too hot and we can't control it as easily the products of using this in the nuclear power generation. With all those other products in there it's not as safe, not as easy to control. Therefore, it becomes spent. The spent fuel rods could well be in the repository of the Yucca Mountain site.

What does the Yucca Mountain site have to offer? There is one of the positive features of the Yucca Mountain site that makes it a very desirable site. It has a very deep water table, 1800 feet below the surface. If you're looking for a drink of water this is not the place to drill a well. It's a great place because we can put the repository in the unsaturated rocks easily, 500 feet above the water table. What we don't know, of course, is how rapidly the water table might rise in 10,000 years. We know that 10,000 years takes us back in time almost to the period of glaciation. There were in fact still glaciers in the Lake Michigan lobe and not too far north of the Canadian border in parts of Canada and there were ice advances even into north central Wisconsin along the Lake Michigan lowland area. Climate changes could be relatively significant over 10,000 years. But it's a desert environment, it's low rain fall most of the rainfall evaporates. Yes, but now that we see there's a very low population and the lands also already under government control, some of the minerals in volcanic rock act to slow the movement of radionuclides if they should break loose. We don't want them to break loose, we're going to take every possible...zeolites are the specific materials that could break loose and absorb the radionuclides. There must be some other complicating factors. There are. Complex geology. Ground water flow in dry rocks, how do you characterize it? You can't just dump a bucket of water and find out over a hundred mile area which way it flows, especially if it's going to evaporate before it really starts to flow. Think about that. How do you characterize ground water flow in an area that doesn't have the groundwater where you want to characterize the flow? That was a problem.

Volcanic activity for the last 2 million years, some folks would say, 2 million years that's a long time. It's unlikely I'll see this volcanic activity again. Yes, it's not going to happen tomorrow. The probability of it happening in the year 2000, very, very infinitesimal. But in 10,000 years we're going to hedge our bets a little bit. Evidence of faults and earthquakes associated with the faults within the past 2 million years. A year ago in June there was a earthquake that rattled the pictures hanging on the wall of the trailer at the Yucca Mountain site from which they are working on all the effort, the characterization of the site. Disconcerting to say the least. Probably one that should be added here, complicating features, it's in Nevada. The governor of Nevada and the two senators from Nevada, none of them think it's a good place to put it.

In order to characterize, look at all these different types of studies. Think of all the things that have to be done. If you're going to bury something that's not nice and you don't want it to reach the environment, you're going to have to do all types of geology studies. Geochemistry of the rocks themselves. Geochemistry...what is the rock material like itself? What is it going to add? What else can we find out? Tectonics, volcanism, mountain building, earthquakes, this is a real problem. That's why so many studies have been done. Rock characteristics...they start swiss cheesing the area and I would respectfully point out that the more holes you drill in the rock the less valuable it is as a repository because you have holes in it. Mineral resources, this is an interesting one. What if some of the rare earth turn out to be in 10,000 years real valuable. They're not valuable now, neither is solid waste but we may be going back to our dumps because we going to use it again. You think, what are the chances of that? I'd ask you what are the chances of going back and using the gob piles from the coal refuse cleaning operations, which we do now every day? What are the chances of going back to the waste, the gang minerals at gold mines that had accumulated for 150 years or more? We reprocess that material. It's happening today. Don't be too quick and say our chances are very, very slim.

Hydrology, what happens to water under the ground? Geohydrology studies, the climate, we've been especially in the past four years, we have a whole new perspective of climate. It may not be necessarily overall climate change that does it but the shifting of the upper air flow. Look at areas that are now in drought or areas that are drowned. It was an upper air flow pattern based on, what we thought was a good handle on, El Nino, but we didn't have a good handle on La Nina. Global climate change does not necessarily reflect the most significant problem in a few hundred years as would La Nina or El Nino changes.

Metrology, what is the difference between weather and climate? A lot. A big, big difference. Do our students know the difference? What's the average temperature today? If it's 5 degrees warmer what does that mean? It's just over an average. For example, the past five years in the 90s are the warmest ones on record worldwide. That maybe has a broader characterization, a broader meaning that needs to be examined. The surface hydrology...which way is the water running when it does rain? It will rain in those desert areas. It's not true desert anyway. Engineering, our good friends the engineers, they have to get the characteristics of the rock. The mechanical strength of the rock and the thermal. What happens if it gets hot? How far does that transmit the rock properties overall? A tremendous number of tests need to be run as to whether or not that's going to be good material. What are we going to do? We're going to have a waste package and we want to be confident that it can be stored. We have the uranium oxide fuel pellets in the waste package then we have a stainless steel cladding, surrounding area, or zirconium alloy. Then we have the fuel rods and dividers for the fuel rods in a metallic container and then a 2" air gap, because it will not allow the rock to get too hot. If we were using salt, what's one of the problems of heat getting the salt? It has a melting point and it will flow. If it gets wet, not good. This whole package, 187", about a 10 foot cylinder.

The Yucca Mountain Ridge is a very straight mountain. It is a very, very remote situation on a high mountain, 1,800 feet down to the ground water level. Any ground water that might enter through rain could get down so you want to put it fairly deep and keep it out of the way of the water table.

As they started to characterize the soils up on top, they came across layers of calcium carbonate and that got them real scared. There were layers of calcium carbonate in vein like deposits in the soil that you could dig down to with a shovel. They said, "Where did that come from? Could the water table have risen so very rapidly and therefore caused through the evaporation of the calcium carbonate charged ground water that evaporates and leaves calcium carbonate behind?" It was a big flap about 10 years ago. Some folks were sure that it signified that the groundwater level might rise very, very rapidly. Others said, no, we think it is a result of the soil forming or pedogenic processes. The chemical weathering is ongoing on the top of the soil and this is only a weathering phenomena right up at the very top. The upper two, three, or four feet tops of this whole sequence. Trying to get consensus on that was not easy. It was quite a battle. They said the first thing to do is dig a tunnel. In order to dig a tunnel you need a tunnel boring machine. Being the federal government a tunnel boring machine is a TBM. The TBM has all these teeth and this is similar to the types of huge boring machines that were generated to build the Chunnel connecting France with England. They built three of them for the Chunnel because when the bits got dull, what was the cheapest way of handling that whole situation? Pulling that back out and replacing them? No. They just put it into a side tunnel and parked it forever then brought a new one in and continued on. Really interesting.

The Yucca Mountain Ridge is a lonely ridge, not much vegetation, really pretty sparse, and that is going to be, presumably, where the site was where all this characterization is to be ongoing. How do you get to this site? You can access this site at: www.ymp.gov (Yucca Mountain Project).

Dr. Deb: (Shows picture) Here we have the unsaturated zone marked here in the rock unit and then the saturated zone down below. There's a fault that's visible here and shows you where the water table is but it's really hard to discern that. Here's the welded tuff and up here is nonwelded tuff and the zeolites are down in there in this zone (points to an area on picture).

Dr. Bob: The zeolites, they're funny, silicate minerals, something like feldspars. But they will absorb, take on, the radioactive atoms. Another possibility is to encase individual radioactive atoms in boreal silicate glass and then just store the beads. The glass is like an encasement, like putting it into marbles.

There are all kinds of diagrams on the YMP site. On the geology overview area of the site it just talks about the earth science studies at the site. We can look at the different rock types, the water movement (very little rainfall at Yucca Mountain). The prevailing winds generally, in the U.S., are west to east. You build on the rain shadow side. A great question to get into, with 8^th graders, even some 5^th graders could handle that information, as to "What side of the mountain would you place it? Which side would you choose?" Talk about the water table and earthquakes (which are a real problem). They're always concerned about compromising the package. Can it be shipped safely? Can it be handled safely? If you put it in this thing and an earthquake happens what might potentially happen?

That repository is the only one we're working on. There is not other. There was supposed to be a second facility in the eastern U.S. If you look at all the locations of the nuclear power plants in the U.S., the vast majority are east of the Mississippi. Where's the site? West of the Mississippi. There was supposed to be a backup site in the original plan established back in the 1980s to be chosen east of the Mississippi. It just didn't happen. It's not going to happen.

Monitored retrievable, we can put it in and take it back out. Storage, it's temporary. Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) in an eastern site, at one point in time, one person suggested that WV would be a great site because that was his home state and they needed the money down there. He now worked in VA and that didn't go over real well in West Virginia.

Remember I talked about this being the public generated nuclear waste. A city that was built from nothing and secretively during WW II was Los Alamos. It had been the location for a summer camp for boys. Oppenheimer, who was put in charge of this, was a civilian physicist had an uneasy marriage with a general in the army. That was like oil and water. It's an interesting story. They built secretively. They took over the camp by imminent domain. If you ever get a chance go to Los Alamos. The museum is absolutely fascinating. The geology is fascinating. You're up on the high plateau and there are ancient Anasazi sites and other Native American sites down below. The only thing, Los Alamos was up there (points to picture) and the repository that was chosen is Carlsbad in carbonate deposits in southern New Mexico. What you have to do is come down from Los Alamos come right through Albuquerque and then right into the outskirts of Santa Fe. You'd have to truck all this. It was in May of '98 that the EPA approved this to expand it and continue to take more. It's also known as the WIPP site. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project. It is a fascinating story in and amongst itself.

That leaves us a little bit of time to talk about radon. What is radon important for?

Dr. Deb: Radon is a byproduct of uranium decay and we find it a lot in West Virginia in our black, black shales. The problem it reeks with us in WV is that it gets trapped in tight basements. Places that aren't necessarily aerated well, on dust particles. It concentrates in your basements then you go in there, your family room is down there and you inhale it. Your skins blocks it but unfortunately as you're breathing the oxygen the dust particles get into your lungs and then it becomes a health threat.

Dr. Bob: (Goes to overhead to a sketch provided by the EPA as to the types of problems) How can radon get into your home? Two major ways: by air, Think of all the leakages in your own home. How many around pipes and maybe the vent to the furnace or the dryer? And, by groundwater. In general, radon in groundwater is not a problem. I know of only 1 home that they had to abandon it because of radon. Along the flanks of Pikes Peak. The radon concentration in the water they were drinking was unbelievable. Usually is so very, very diluted it's not a problem. Radon will get into your home. This is the radon reduction techniques for detached houses. Many of the older homes leaked like a sieve, which is great, because the radon leaks right out. It has a glossary of terms, not just one page, it's several pages. A picocurie (sp.) is an important feature here. A picocurie is an exposure, a unit of measurement of radioactivity. Four picocuries you have problems. In Canada, they use 22 picocuries because they are in an area where the bedrock is so highly charged with uranium, with granite as a bedrock, if we had as a level 4 picocuries we'd spend a major portion of our gross national product trying to fix houses. Who set this 4 picocuries? Our good friends, EPA. They said, how are we going to establish this and determine the level of radon? We'll do epidemiological studies. We will do scientific and health studies together. Who would have been exposed in their lifetimes to natural radioactivity? Aha! Uranium miners, they're in the tunnels all the time. They studied them and came up with 4 picocuries. However, they forgot to ask one question. How many of you miner's smoke? By the time they went back there were too many of them that had passed on. They're study did not include the situation with respect to smoking. What do we know today about smoking and radon? If you smoke you greatly increase your risk. If you never smoked then you're in much better shape if your exposed to radon. Critical factor again, radon adheres to dust particles. You breath in dust particles. It decays in your lungs and you do not have the surface that can withstand the alpha particles. Some people have problems if they smoke and some don't. This publication comes from PA, Pennsylvania's Consumer Guide Radon Reduction, but WV has one also. If you buy or sell a home the lending institutions are going to request a radon test.

Dr. Deb: All they do in these homes that have tested positive for radon, they just put a big fan in there. Blow it out. It's a high tech fan.

Dr. Bob: Or they come around and seal up the base of the home.

Dr. Deb: They caulk everything.

Dr. Bob: You've got to be careful about these. Price it so you don't get taken by these people. Make sure they have a good reputation and so forth.

That brings us to the end. For those who wish to join us in the fall semester, Tuesdays 6-8. It will be Physical Geology. If you didn't have it in college it's a great opportunity to sit down with us. We'll have some things up by then on the web site for field trips around West Virginia. It's run a great deal differently then this particular course. It's good fun. Check our web site for due date on the last quiz and we will be getting back the quizzes to you in the mail.

It's been good fun. Deb, thank you very much and I hope you've enjoyed it too?

Dr. Deb: I have. See some of you the first week in June.

Dr. Bob: So, until the fall, take care.

WVGES Education Specialist, Tom Repine (repine@wvgs.wvnet.edu)

Page last revised: April 2000

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