Radionuclides transport at the site of a low- and intermediate-level waste repository, Saligny, Romania

The site of the future Saligny low- and intermediate-level waste repository presents a rather deep unsaturated zone consisting of a pile of loess and clay, underlain by a calcareous aquifer. Van Genuchten parameters were first estimated in laboratory on samples collected from all the horizons, at different depths. In a second kind of test, moisture parameters were estimated from the natural water content profiles, observed in some wells, by inversion of the unsaturated flow equation. Based on the solution of the inverse problem as well as of the sensitivity analyses a simple physical model of the vadose zone was determined, consisting of a layered sequence that was subjected to a constant infiltration flux. Radionuclide migration was simulated in a vertical cross section made along the most probable path from the repository towards the surface water discharge zone. For radionuclide release, a source term was evaluated by ensuring a conservative estimate of cell inventory during the cell-filling operation. According to the simulation results, for the medium half-life nuclides, the unsaturated zone is a perfect barrier, whereas the long half-life isotopes break through in the aquifer at significant concentrations.