Through diffusion study on Olkiluoto veined gneiss and pegmatitic granite from a structural perspective

Abstract

Spent nuclear fuel from Finnish power plants is planned to be deposited deep in the crystalline bedrock in Olkiluoto, Finland. The bedrock needs to be well characterized to assess the risks inherent to the long term safety of the site. In the bedrock the possibly released radionuclides are mainly transported by water conducting fractures and their transport is retarded by diffusion and sorption. In porous materials these properties are typically linked to microscopic pore structure (pore size distribution, tortuosity and constrictivity) and chemical nature of the minerals and groundwater.

In this work transport properties of veined gneiss (VGN) and pegmatitic granite (PGR) samples from Olkiluoto were studied using various through diffusion experiments and the C-14-PMMA autoradiography. Through diffusion experiments were performed on rock cores using HTO and ³⁶Cl in water phase and He in gas phase as tracers. The effective diffusion coefficients (D_e) determined for the VGN were found to be dependent on the tracer molecule (D_e(HTO) < D_e(He) < D_e(Cl)) whereas for the PGR such a dependence was not found. The porosity distributions determined by the C-14-PMMA autoradiography revealed the difference in the pore structure between the samples. The porosity of VGN consists mostly of grain boundary pores and pores between biotite lamellae. Due to a high content of nanometer scale pores anion exclusion affected the results of ³⁶Cl and Knudsen diffusion the ones of He for VGN. Furthermore, in the PGR micrometer scale intra- and intergranular fissures form a connected network for diffusive transport and thus all tracers diffuse at the same rate.