Finite Element Models For Sediment And Contaminant Transport In Surface Waters Transport Of Sediments And Radionuclides In The Clinch River Sup 137 Cs Sup 90 Sr Sup 198 Au

Radionuclide migration in rivers was simulated in this study to advance the state-of-the-art of computer modeling on radionuclide transport by including the effects of sediment-radionuclide interaction. Specifically, the finite element sediment and contaminant transport model, SERATRA, was modified and applied to the Clinch River in Tennessee to solve time-dependent, longitudinal and vertical distributions of sediments and radionuclides. Sediment transport was modeled for each sediment size fraction (i.e., sand, silt and clay), and radionuclide transport was modeled for dissolved and particulate nuclides. Furthermore, particulate radionuclides were solved for those adsorbed by each sediment size fraction. Three radionuclides, cesium-137, strontium-90 and gold-198, were selected as sources of continuous and instantaneous releases because of their adsorption characteristics and field data availability. Agreement of predicted results and field data for continuous release cases was very good, while for instantaneous releases agreement was poor. It was revealed that approximately 93 percent of the cesium-137 is in a particulate form, and only about 7 percent is dissolved. The model predicted that approximately 50 percent of the cesium 137 introduced in the Clinch River will be deposited on the river bed before it reaches the river mouth as a result of contaminated sediment deposition in slow moving areas of the river. Results on strontium-90 indicated the opposite trend, i.e., approximately 97 percent is in the dissolved form and only 3 percent was associated with the sediment; hence, the majority of strontium-90 moves with the water through the river system. Gold-198 was used for instantaneous release simulation, but since agreement between simulated results and data was not good no conclusions can be drawn for this case.