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Evaporite Dissolution Relevant to the Wipp Site, Northern Delaware Basin, Southeastern New Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2011

Steven J. Lambert
Steven J. Lambert*
Affiliation:
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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Abstract

Evaluation of the threat of natural dissolution of host evaporites to the integrity of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico has taken into consideration (1) the volume of “missing” rock salt, (2) the occurrence (or not) of characteristic dissolution brines, (3) geomorphic features, some of which are unrelated to dissolution, and (4) the time intervals over which dissolution may have been active. Even under the assumption that all “missing” halite was originally present and has been removed by dissolution, there is no evidence of active preferential removal of the lower Salado Formation halite by any geologically reasonable process. The geologic record contains evidence of dissolution in the Triassic and Jurassic; to constrain all removal of basinal halite to the late Cenozoic yields an unrealistically high rate of removal. Application to the lower Salado of a stratabound mechanism known to be active in Nash Draw, a near-surface feature within the Basin, allows a minimum survival time of 2,500,000 years to be predicted for the subsurface facility for storage of radioactive waste at WIPP. This calculation is based on an analysis of all known dissolution features in the Delaware Basin, and takes into account the wetter (pluvial) climate during the past 600,000 years.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 15: Symposium D – Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management VI , 1982 , 291
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1983

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References

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