Crystalline Disposal R&D at LBNL: FY20 Progress Report

Abstract

In some cases there may be a milestone where an item is being fabricated, maintenance is being performed on a facility, or a document is being issued through a formal document control process where it specifically calls out a formal review of the document. In these cases, documentation (e.g., inspection report, maintenance request, work planning package documentation or the documented review of the issued document through the document control process) of the completion of the activity, along with the Document Cover Sheet, is sufficient to demonstrate achieving the milestone. NOTE 2: If QRL 1, 2, or 3 is not assigned, then the QRL 4 box must be checked, and the work is understood to be performed using laboratory specific QA requirements. This includes any deliverable developed in conformance with the respective National Laboratory / Participant, DOE or NNSA-approved QA Program NOTE 3: If the lab has an NQA-1 program and the work to be conducted requires an NQA-1 program, then the QRL-1 box must be checked in the work Package and on the Appendix E cover sheet and the work must be performed in accordance with the Lab's NQA-1 program. The QRL-4 box should not be checked Name/Title of Deliverable/Milestone/Revision No.

International Collaboration Activities in Geologic Disposal Research: FY2021 Progress

“…In FY21, LBNL continued its a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the field testing results (Section 6.7.2). The following tasks were performed: (1) interpretation of the observed fracture displacements during stimulation, (2) evaluation of stress perturbations and their impact on fracture aperture at the borehole scale, and (3) study on stress perturbations and their impact on fracture flow at the network scale (Guglielmi et al, 2021). These analyses provided insights into the stress state for the borehole intervals, as well as how the fractures responded to hydraulic stimulation.…”

“…This section summarizes two international collaboration activities that address above research needs. Section 6.5.1 describes hydromechanical modeling of fracture contact mechanics upon shearing, an effort related to the DECOVALEX-2023 Project (Guglielmi et al, 2021;Hadgu et al, 2021). Section 6.5.2 highlights discrete fracture network (DFN) modeling efforts to characterize the impact of fracture network structure on flow, transport, and fluid-fluid reactive transport (Viswanathan et al, 2021).…”

“…A variable permeability model was used for the fracture, based on the cubic law equation with a value of hydraulic aperture that changed with the evolution of fault normal displacement. The fracture and intact rock properties used for modeling are given in Table 3-1 of the report by Guglielmi et al (2021). The host rock is assumed to be linear elastic, with the impermeable rock matrix.…”

“…Section 6.8.2 provides a description of LBNL's FY21 efforts on field characterization of transmissive fractures in crystalline rocks as part of the COSC collaboration (Guglielmi et al, 2021, Sections 3.1-3.5). Section 6.8.3 summarizes the results of laboratory studies to establish a correlation between flowing fracture zones in the field and their characteristics as measured in respective core samples (Guglielmi et al, 2021, Section 3.6), and Section 6.8.4 describes the development of a new numerical model to reproduce the results of previously conducted fracture-flow laboratory experiments (Guglielmi et al, 2021, Section 3.7).…”

“…In FY21, the LBNL team continued its analysis and interpretation of the COSC-1 SIMFIP data, including a detailed interpretation of the observed fracture displacements during stimulation (Section 6.8.2.2), an evaluation of stress perturbations and their impact on fracture aperture at the borehole scale (Section 6.8.2.3), and finally a study on stress perturbations and their impact on fracture flow at the network scale (Section 6.8.2.4). This work is described in detail in Guglielmi et al (2021) and summarized below.…”