1. Final report of the Peña Blanca natural analogue project
- Author
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Elizabeth Y. Anthony, Steven H. Harder, Michael Sean Rearick, J. Walton, Steven J. Goldstein, Sowmitri Tarimala, Teh-Lung Ku, Teamrat A. Ghezzehei, Schön S. Levy, Mostafa Fayek, Diana French, Michael T. Murrell, Ronald S. Amato, George Saulnier, Ignacio Reyes-Cortes, Shangde Luo, Paul Cook, Ronald Oliver, Jose Alfredo Pineda, Deborah E. Norman, Philip C. Goodell, Andrew J. Nunn, Amr I. Abdel-Fattah, Rodrigo de la Garza, Minghua Ren, Patrick F. Dobson, and Katrina Pekar-Carpenter more...
- Subjects
Cuesta ,Geography ,geography.geographical_feature_category ,chemistry ,Mining engineering ,chemistry.chemical_element ,Radioactive waste ,Uranium ,Archaeology ,Natural (archaeology) ,Mine site - Abstract
The Pena Blanca region, 50 km north of Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico, was a target of uranium exploration and mining by the Mexican government. After mining ceased in 1981, researchers became interested in this region as a study area for subsurface uranium migration with relevance to geologic disposal of nuclear waste. Many studies related to this concept were conducted at the Nopal I mine site located on a cuesta (hill) of the Sierra Pena Blanca. This site has geologic, tectonic, hydrologic, and geochemical similarities to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a formerly proposed site for a high-level nuclear-waste repository in the unsaturated zone. The U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE), Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), sponsored studies at Nopal I in the 1990s and supported the drilling of three research wells – PB1, PB2, and PB3 – at the site in 2003. Beginning in 2004, the Pena Blanca Natural Analogue Project was undertaken by U.S. DOE, OCRWM to develop a three-dimensional conceptual model of the transport of uranium and its radiogenic daughter products at the Nopal I site. more...
- Published
- 2016
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