Abstract
Details are presented of the development of a coupled modeling simulator for assessing the evolution in the near-field of a geological repository for radioactive waste disposal where concrete is used as a backfill. The simulator uses OpenMI, a standard for exchanging data between simulation software programs at run-time, to form a coupled chemical-mechanical-hydrogeological model of the system. The approach combines a tunnel scale stress analysis finite element model, a discrete element model for accurately modeling the patterns of emerging cracks in the concrete, and a finite element and finite volume model of the chemical processes and alteration in the porous matrix and cracks in the concrete, to produce a fully coupled model of the system. Combining existing detailed simulation software in this way with OpenMI has the benefit of not relying on simplifications that might be necessary to combine all of the modeled processes in a single piece of software.
Highlights
The assessment timescales associated with geological disposal concepts for high-level radioactive waste and long-lived intermediate level and low-level wastes necessitate the long-term modeling of the near-field engineered barrier system (EBS) in order to demonstrate long-term safety of disposal (e.g., Carter et al [1])
The wrapped models are managed within the OpenMI framework by a controller application that is responsible for configuring the input and output data connections between the models at run-time, allowing a coupled representation of the processes that occur within the whole system to be defined
17 shows the porosity distribution at 12,000 years (2000disposal years after the appearance of the Modeling of coupled processes associated with geological concepts for radioactive crack)
Summary
The assessment timescales associated with geological disposal concepts for high-level radioactive waste and long-lived intermediate level and low-level wastes necessitate the long-term modeling of the near-field engineered barrier system (EBS) in order to demonstrate long-term safety of disposal (e.g., Carter et al [1]). The example application of the coupled modeling focusses on simulating the coupled chemicalhydro-mechanical (CHM) evolution of the entire TRU Group 3/4 EBS [12] It does not currently include coupled effects of thermal evolution processes, these could be added in a future update, given the extensible approach that has been followed. This is a new simulation tool that has been developed in the current work to cope with the need to model the transport and reaction of solutes in domains that can undergo cracking.
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