Innovative Sensors, Technologies and Strategies for Performance Monitoring of Waste Disposal Facilities and Remediation Approaches

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Idaho National Laboratory are co-sponsors if a special session on "Innovative Sensors, Technologies and Strategies for Performance Monitoring of Waste Disposal Facilities and Remediation Approaches" (T88) at the 2006 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 22-25, 2006. This session showcases innovative sensors, technologies and strategies being used to monitor the performance of waste disposal facilities and various remediation approaches for isolating or mitigating ground-water contaminant plumes.

Session Rationale:

Across the United States there are a multitude of sites where there is either a potential for contaminant releases to the ground water (e.g., waste disposal or storage facilities) or existing ground-water contaminant plumes (e.g., Superfund Sites or legacy DOE sites). A primary challenge at these sites is how to monitor the spatial and temporal dynamics of unsaturated and saturated zone processes that leach, mobilize and transport contaminants through the subsurface to exposure locations, and that affect the effectiveness of remedial actions. Associated with this monitoring challenge is the need for: (1) synoptic site characterization and understanding; (2) timely and transparent generation and dissemination of site monitoring information; (3) the determination of risks associated with the potential for or actual contaminant releases; and (4) confirmation of performance models that predict contaminant transport and the effectiveness of remediation.

Monitoring at many of these sites could be enhanced by the use of innovative sensors, technologies and strategies to assess the performance of the site’s ground-water system behavior and to support remediation decisions.

The costs associated with current monitoring programs are significant, even for small sites and current monitoring practices often do not succeed in providing the required understanding of site dynamics. Novel, innovative techniques for site monitoring are required which both reduce costs and provide more detailed temporal and spatial information on the ground-water system and contaminant plume behavior. Such techniques would include both the use of novel sensors and integration of different sensing modalities and novel methods for information generation. This new performance monitoring approach would: integrate hard and soft hydrogeologic, geophysical and geochemical knowledge with site-specific monitoring strategies; couple performance assessment modeling and with sensing performance indicators, as well as an overall automation of data acquisition, its analysis and visualization of monitoring data and predictive modeling results. This session will provide overviews of different innovative approaches presently being implemented to monitor contaminant releases, migration and effective remediation.

Conveners

• Thomas J. Nicholson, NRC, TJN@nrc.gov
• Roelof Jan Versteeg, Idaho National Laboratory, roelof.versteeg@inl.gov
• John W. Lane, USGS, jwlane@usgs.gov

General Conference Information

• Conference Home Page

More Information

• Subsurface Point-Source Contamination Research Projects
• Site Remediation, Crosscutting information on the monitoring or assessment of site remediation activities
• Methods, Crosscutting information on field and laboratory environmental measurement methods

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