Group studies radioactivity
Assistant head of the physics department, David Peak, and a team of undergraduates from Utah State University have developed a model to study water flow through fractured rock in order to learn more about radioactive waste contamination.
Richard Datwyler, a senior studying physics, said, “This model enables us to study the way water behaves.”
He said, “If you know how water behaves, you can discover how radioactive waste spreads.”
The water can carry radioactive waste and contaminate other water supplies, Datwyler said.
“This has been a hard task because there are so many variables and things that affect how water flows,” he said.
Peak said it was speculated radioactive contamination and waste flow would run at a constant rate through fractured rock.
However, in an experiment performed at Hell’s Half Acre located in Idaho at a Research site in 1999, and more recently under more controlled conditions in the laboratory at a government lab in Idaho Falls he said, “We found that to be the opposite.”
Datwyler said at the experiment rendered at Hell’s Half Acre, a multi-purpose national laboratory research team, called INEEL (Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory) applied water at a constant pressure on a bed of fractured basaltic rock. The water was then allowed to percolate downward through a fracture, ultimately leaking into an open chamber underneath (like a cave).
As they measured the drops in the cavity there was never a steady flow to observe, he said. The laboratory model and Hell’s Half Acre’s experiment showed extremely similar results.
Datwyler said, members of the team will soon have the opportunity to present this model to Congress and other committees.
“We have definitely hit some interest with some people,” Datwyler said.