Correlations Between Physical and Hydraulic Properties and Uranium Desorption in Contaminated, Intact Sediment Cores

An unlined disposal pond in the 300 Area of the Hanford Site received uranium-bearing liquid effluents associated with nuclear reactor fuel rod processing from 1943 to 1975. Contaminated sediments from the base and sides of the former pond were excavated and removed from the site in the early 1990s, but a uranium plume has persisted in the groundwater at concentrations exceeding the drinking water standard. The former process pond is located adjacent to the Columbia River and seasonal fluctuations in the river stage and water table provide a mechanism for resupplying residual uranium from the vadose zone to the groundwater when the lower vadose zone is periodically rewetted. Intact cores were collected from the site for measurements of physical, hydraulic, and geochemical properties. Multistep outflow experiments were also performed on the intact cores to determine permeability-saturation-capillary pressure relations. Pore water displaced during these experiments for two of the vadose zone cores was also analyzed for uranium. For a core containing finer-textured sediment classified as muddy sandy gravel, and a core containing coarser-textured sediment classified as gravel, the relative aqueous uranium concentrations increased by factors of 8.3 and 1.5, respectively, as the cores were desaturated and progressively smaller pore-size classes were drained. Aqueous concentrations of uranium in the extracted pore waters were up to 115 times higher than the current drinking water standard of 30 ppb. These results confirm that there is a continuing source of uranium in the vadose zone at the site, and are consistent with a hypothesis that the persistence of the groundwater uranium plume is also associated, in part, with rate-limited mass transfer from finer-textured sediments. The data from these and several other intact cores from the site are evaluated to explore relationships between physical and hydraulic properties and uranium desorption characteristics.