Modeling the thermal-hydrologic processes in a large-scale underground heater test in partially saturated fractured tuff

Abstract

The Drift Scale Test (DST) is being conducted in an underground facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to probe the coupled thermal, hydrological, mechanical, and chemical processes likely to occur in the fractured rock mass around a potential high-level nuclear waste repository. Thermal-hydrological processes in the DST have been simulated using a three-dimensional numerical model. The model incorporates the realistic test configuration and all available site-specific measurements pertaining to the thermal and hydrological properties of the unsaturated fractured tuff of the test block. The modeled predictions were compared to the extensive set of measured data collected in the first year of this 8-year-long test. The mean error between the predictions and measurement at 12 months of heating for over 1600 temperature sensors is about 2 °C. Heat-pipe signature in the temperature data, indicating two-phase regions of liquid-vapor counterflow, is seen in both the measurements and simulated results. The redistribution of moisture content in the rock mass (resulting from vaporization and condensation) was probed by periodic air-injection testing and geophysical measurements. Good agreement also occurred between the model predictions and these measurements. The general agreement between predictions from the numerical simulations and the measurements of the thermal test indicates that our fundamental understanding of the coupled thermal-hydrologic processes at Yucca Mountain is sound. However, effects of spatial heterogeneity from discrete fractures that are observed in the temperature data are not matched by simulations from the numerical model, which treat the densely spaced fractures as a continuum.