Estimation of in-situ groundwater conditions based on geochemical equilibrium simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a means of estimating in-situ groundwater pH and oxidation-redox potential (ORP), two very important parameters for species migration analysis in safety assessments for radioactive waste disposal or carbon dioxide sequestration. The method was applied to a pumping test in a deep borehole drilled in a tertiary formation in Japan for validation. The following application examples are presented: when applied to several other pumping tests at the same site, it could estimate distributions of the in-situ groundwater pH and ORP; applied to multiple points selected in the groundwater database of Japan, it could help estimate the in-situ redox reaction governing the groundwater conditions in some areas.