Modeling of water -glass and water -granite interaction in Beishan Area, Northwestern China

抄録

  Water-glass and water-granite interactions in Beishan Area, a potential area for China HLW repository, have been studied using EQ3/6, a geochemical software package developed by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for use in modeling the complex geochemical processes that occur when aqueous solutions react with soil, rock, or solid waste materials, and the results of calculation are reported in this paper. The modeling shows that a lot of secondary minerals which contain the components of the glass could be formed due to the interaction between glass and groundwater of Beishan Wuyi well. The formation of the secondary minerals could not only decrease the concentrations of the radionuclides in the groundwater, but also fill and block the pores in the rock, and reduce the groundwater flow rate. These processes are very important to prevent the nuclides from migrating into the human’s environment. The most significant feature for the interaction between groundwater and granite from Beishan area is the precipitation of large amount of clay minerals, such as montmorillonite, smectite, nontronite, beidellite and so on, in the later stage of the reaction. All of them have very strong adsorptivity for the nuclides. So it is thought that the granite of Beishan Area is favorable to the construction of HLW repository.