Abstract
Fractures are features that may be encountered in potential host rock for high level nuclear waste disposal. They may appear as potential pathways for radionuclides transport. Hydrodynamic properties of the transport inside these systems must then be characterized. Miscible non-sorbing and sorbing tracer displacements were performed on a 2-D real fracture geometry with a lattice-gas cellular automaton (LGA). LGA was shown to easily handle the complex geometry of such a fracture. The numerical breakthrough curves obtained were inverted by means of the convective-dispersive equation (CDE) and the mobile and immobile model (MIM) transport models. Two main conclusions were drawn: ( i ) at the length scale of the study, transport in our fracture geometry was more accurately interpreted in terms of the MIM model rather than in terms of the classical CDE model; and ( ii ) the retardation factor alone was not sufficient to take into account the modification of the transport due to sorption; the hydrodynamic dispersion coefficient value had to be increased.
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