Description
Book SynopsisThe Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) disaster that occurred in Ukraine on April 26, 1986, was one of the most devastating in human history. Using this as a case study, the AGU monograph Groundwater Vulnerability: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster is devoted to the problem of groundwater vulnerability, where the results of long-term field and modeling investigations of radionuclide transport in soil and groundwater, within the Ukrainian part of the Dnieper River basin (Kyiv region of Ukraine), are discussed. The authors provide a comprehensive review of existing literature on the assessment of groundwater vulnerability and then describe an improved methodology, which is developed based on integration of the methods of hydrogeological zonation and modeling of anomalously fast migration of radioactive contaminants from the land surface toward groundwater. This volume also includes the evaluation of the effect of preferential and episodic flow on transport of radionuclides toward the
Table of Contents
Abstract v
Introduction: Importance of Lessons Learned from Assessment of Groundwater Vulnerability at Chernobyl vii
1. Methods of Groundwater Vulnerability and Protectability Assessment 1
1.1. Method of hydrogeological zoning 2
1.2. Index methods 3
1.3. Parametric methods 9
1.4. Modeling methods 19
2. Chernobyl-Born Radionuclides in Geological Environment 25
3.Preferential Flow and Migration Zones in Geological Environment 39
3.1. State of problem study 39
3.2. PFMz classification and occurrence 41
3.3. Methodological approaches of PFMZ study 47
3.4. Indicators of PFMZ activity in depressions 53
3.5. Preliminary evaluations of PFMZ influence on upper groundwater 57
3.6. Practical importance of PFMZ 60
4. Methodology of Groundwater Vulnerability and Protectability Assessment 65
4.1. General consideration 65
4.2. Vulnerability and protectability assessment for upper groundwater (Unconfined Aquifer) 70
4.3. Vulnerability and protectability assessment for confined aquifers 73
5. Groundwater Vulnerability and Protectability to Chernobyl-Born Radionuclide 81
5.1. Upper groundwater 81
5.2. Confined aquifers 93
6. Summary 101
References 105
Index 115
