Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Engineering Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Environmental Engineering

All Dissertations

Theses/Dissertations

Plutonium

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Experimental Evidence For Colloid-Facilitated Transport Of Plutonium, Hilary Emerson Dec 2014

Experimental Evidence For Colloid-Facilitated Transport Of Plutonium, Hilary Emerson

All Dissertations

Colloid-facilitated transport of the actinides has been observed previously in the field on the kilometer scale. The objective of this work is to investigate the mechanisms of colloid-facilitated transport with controlled settings and conditions. The experimental work in this dissertation investigates transport of a ternary complex with iron oxide colloids, organic ligands and actinides in the presence of quartz or a natural sandy soil as well as simplified systems building up to the ternary complexes. The first three papers investigate the following: (1) unsaturated transport of iron oxide colloids in a natural sandy soil lysimeter with and without natural organic …


Modeling Long-Term Plutonium Transport In The Savannah River Site Vadose Zone, Deniz Demirkanli Dec 2006

Modeling Long-Term Plutonium Transport In The Savannah River Site Vadose Zone, Deniz Demirkanli

All Dissertations

Improved understanding of flow and radionuclide transport in vadose zone sediments is fundamental to future planning involving radioactive materials. Long-term experiments were conducted at the Savannah River Site (SRS), where a series of lysimeters containing sources of different Pu oxidation states were placed in the shallow subsurface and exposed to the environment for 2 to 11 years. After the experiments, Pu activity concentrations were measured along vertical cores. The distributions were anomalous in nature, with irregular downward migration and unexpected upward migration. Previous studies suggested that surface-mediated, oxidation/reduction (redox) reactions may be responsible for the anomalies. This hypothesis is tested …