Projects
Drift-Scale Test
The Drift-Scale Test is a large-scale, in situ thermal test that we are conducting in the Exploratory Studies Facility over a 10- year period. For this test, our overall objective is to acquire an in-depth understanding of the thermal, mechanical, hydrological, and chemical processes that occur in all rock formations. This knowledge is crucial, because at Yucca Mountain the heat of decaying radioactive waste can be expected to intensify these processes. An understanding of the interaction of these processes is essential to our assessment of the repository's long-term performance.
Enhanced Characterization of the Repository Block
Enhanced characterization studies include:
• Construction and testing in the cross drift
• Monitoring drift convergence
• Mapping geologic features
• Collecting rock samples
• Coring
• Logging
• Instrumentation of boreholes to monitor moisture penetration in the rock mass
• Hydrologic and thermal testing in alcoves and niches.
Surface-Based Drilling and Coring
In order to analyze natural processes under ambient conditions, researchers are collecting data from hydrologic, geologic, and geochemical studies. Surface-based testing is performed primarily in boreholes but also includes surface pits and trenches, outcrop mapping, and seismic monitoring.
Underground Transport Test Facility
Project staff have designed and constructed a test facility approximately 8 km southeast of the Nevada Test Site repository area at Busted Butte. Using electrical resistance tomography, ground-penetrating radar, neutron logging, and tracer injection tests, we are investigating the properties and behavior of the unsaturated zone at Busted Butte in order to determine flow and transport properties of rocks below the proposed repository horizon.
Research Areas
Capabilities
of Technical Teams Promotes Interdisciplinary Research
Advanced Simulation and Computing Power. Through
continuous improvements in computing power and numerical
methods, we have greatly increased our ability to explicitly
simulate turbulent flows in regions of high temperature
or pressure gradients such as those created by a wildfire.
Modeling Wildfires, Weather, and Turbulent Flows.
EES-2 has developed a wildfire-behavior-modeling capability
using a full-physics combustion code in an advanced numerical
turbulence model that provides fully interactive computations
between wildfire and local weather. The model also simulates
stochastic descriptions of flying embers and incorporates
physical processes such as radiative preheating of fuels
and smoke emissions.
Populations and Ecological Risks, Dynamic
Response of Ecosystems.
Our ecological research encompasses
populations and ecological risks as well as the dynamic
response of ecosystems to human activities and changes in
land use and climate. Present capabilities include studies
of the potential for flood, hillslope erosion, sediment
transport, and contaminant movement in areas affected by
the Cerro Grande fire, which ravaged the Los Alamos area
in May 2000. We have also investigated the interconnections between ecological and hydrological processes in northern
New Mexico's pinon-juniper woodlands and ponderosa pine
forests.
Modeling of Groundwater, Surface and Subsurface
Hydrology, and Boundary-layer Atmospheric Physics.
EES-2 researchers are studying climatic variability
in the Rio Grande drainage basin, research that draws upon
our knowledge of regional water cycles and incorporates
coupled modeling of groundwater, surface and subsurface
hydrology, and boundary-layer atmospheric physics.
Modeling of Ocean
Circulation Systems.
We also
are developing new models to more accurately represent ocean
circulation systems and are testing new algorithms for describing
biogeochemistry cycles/carbon cycling, trace gas emissions,
and climate feedbacks in global-ocean models.
Investigating Electromagnetic Pulses. Los Alamos
scientists have taken an interest in atmospheric electrification
since the days of atmospheric nuclear testing. Some of the
same processes associated with the propagation of electromagnetic
pulses (EMP) by nuclear tests occur in thunderstorms and
other natural processes. EMPs are potentially harmful to
communications satellites.
EES-2 is using advanced numerical
models to investigate EMPs
and upward electrical discharges "the
red sprites" and "blue jets" that airline pilots sometimes
observe emanating from the tops of thunderclouds. We are
also calculating the source region of optical, electromagnetic
pulse, and infrasound radiation that is generated by nuclear
explosions and natural phenomena such as meteors and lightning,
which propagate through the atmosphere and are recorded
by satellite and ground-based sensors.
Meteorological Instrumentation, Deployment
and Analysis of Observational Data.
EES-2 has considerable
expertise in meteorological instrumentation, deployment
and analysis of observational data.
For DOE's Atmospheric
Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, which focuses on the
role clouds play in modifying solar and terrestrial radiation
and climate, EES-2's Tropical Western Pacific Program Office
has developed three remote research stations on tropical
atolls in the equatorial western Pacific Basin and at Darwin,
Australia. These remote stations constitute one of three
ARM sites worldwide and provide continuous monitoring of
the tropical climate system. The group maintains other instrumentation
platforms for a variety of field measurement requirements,
including remote sensing with LIDAR, radar, and SODAR.
The measurements provided by our Raman LIDAR are a powerful
tool for understanding the behavior of the atmosphere's
surface layer and its interactions with underlying vegetation
and other features of the Earth's surface.
We have also established a Luminescence Geochronology Laboratory to study
optically stimulated luminescence in quartz and feldspar.
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