The Red River Delta in Vietnam is one of the regions whose quaternary aquifers are polluted by arsenic. Chronic toxification by arsenic can cause severe illnesses such as cancer, skin lesions, developmental defects, cardiovascular and neurological diseas-es, and diabetes. In this study, a food processing craft village in the Red River Delta was investigated regarding the potential risk faced by the population due to arsenic. The potential sources of arsenic are the groundwater, the crops grown in the sur-roundings, and animal products from local husbandry. However, the occurrence of arsenic in nature is variable, and its bioavailability and toxicity depend very much on its specification: trivalent compounds are more toxic and often more mobile than pen-tavalent compounds, while inorganic species are generally more toxic than organic ones. Local conditions, such as the redox potential, strongly influence its specification and thus potential bioavailability. The introduction to this work elucidates the key factors which potentially cause human exposure to arsenic: the geological setting of the study area, land and water use pat-terns, and the current state of research regarding the mobilization, bioavailability and plant uptake of arsenic. Although the study area is located in a region where the groundwater is known to be moderately contaminated by arsenic, the level of arsenic in the groundwater in the village had not previously been determined. In this study, water use in the village was examined by a survey among the farmers and by water analyses, which are present-ed in the following chapters. Four main water sources (rain, river, tube well and a pub-lic municipal waterworks) are used for the different daily activities; the highest risk to human health was found to be the bore well water, which is pumped from the shallow Holocene aquifer. The water from the bore wells is commonly used for cleaning and washing as well as to feed the animals and for food processing. Products like noodles and rice wine were examined as well as local pork and poultry. Vegetables from the gardens and rice plants from the surrounding paddy fields were sampled and ana-lyzed. All plants were found to have accumulated arsenic, leafy vegetables showing the highest arsenic concentrations. The results are discussed and compared, and conclusions are drawn in the last part. The reducing conditions in the paddy fields are likely to have a strong influence on arsenic uptake in rice plants and on transport to the aquifer. The installation of a wastewater treatment plant under the research project INHAND, which was funded by the BMBF German Ministry of Education and Research, led to lower arsenic concen-trations in the groundwater. Soaring industrialization, the growing population, and the consumers’ changing behav-ior will widely affect land and water use and hence the potential mobilization of arse-nic. In order to mitigate further human exposure to arsenic, wastewater needs to be treated and the reducing conditions in the rice fields need to be decreased by means of enhanced cultivation methods.

Clay formations are investigated worldwide as potential host rock for the deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW). Usually bentonite is preferred as the buffer and backfill material in the disposal system. In the disposal of HLW, heat emission is one of the most important issues as it can generate a series of complex thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) processes in the surrounding materials and thus change the material properties. In the context of safety assessment, it is important to understand the thermally induced THM interactions and the associated change in material properties. In this work, the thermally induced coupled THM behaviours in the clay host rock and in the bentonite buffer as well as the corresponding coupling effects among the relevant material properties are numerically analysed. A coupled non-isothermal Richards flow mechanical model and a non-isothermal multiphase flow model were developed based on the scientific computer codes OpenGeoSys (OGS). Heat transfer in the porous media is governed by thermal conduction and advective flow of the pore fluids. Within the hydraulic processes, evaporation, vapour diffusion, and the unsaturated flow field are considered. Darcy’s law is used to describe the advective flux of gas and liquid phases. The relative permeability of each phase is considered. The elastic deformation process is modelled by the generalized Hooke’s law complemented with additional strain caused by swelling/shrinkage behaviour and by temperature change. In this study, special attention has been paid to the analysis of the thermally induced changes in material properties. The strong mechanical and hydraulic anisotropic properties of clay rock are described by a transversely isotropic mechanical model and by a transversely isotropic permeability tensor, respectively. The thermal anisotropy is described by adoption of the bedding-orientation-dependent thermal conductivity. The dependency of the thermal conductivity on the degree of water saturation, the dependency of the thermal effects on the water retention behaviour, and the dependency of the effects of the pore pressure variation on the permeability and the anisotropic swelling/shrinkage behaviour have been intensively analysed and the corresponding numerical models to consider those coupling effects have been developed. The developed numerical model has been applied to simulate the laboratory and in situ heating experiments on the bentonite and clay rock at different scales. Firstly the laboratory heating experiment on Callovo-Oxfordian Clay (COX) and the laboratory long-term heating and hydration experiment on MX80 pellets were simulated. Based on the knowledge from the numerical analysis of the laboratory experiments, a 1:2 scale in situ heating experiment of an integrated system of the bentonite engineered barrier system (EBS) in the Opalinus Clay host rock was simulated. All the relevant operation phases were considered in the modelling. Besides, the modelling was extended to 50 years after the heat shut-down with the aim of predicting the long-term behaviours. Additionally, variation calculations were carried out to investigate the effects of the storage capacity of the Opalinus Clay on the thermally induced hydraulic response. In the long-term modelling, the effects of different saturated water permeabilities of buffer material on the resaturation process were analysed. Based on the current researches and model developments, the observed THM behaviours of the bentonite buffer and the clay rock, that is, the measured evolution of temperature, pore pressure, humidity, swelling pressure, and so on in the laboratory and in situ experiments can be reproduced and interpreted well. It is proved that by using both a non-isothermal multiphase flow model and a non-isothermal Richards flow model combined with the corresponding thermal and mechanical models, the major THM behaviours can be captured. It is validated that the developed model is able to simulate the relevant coupled THM behaviours of clayey material under the well-defined laboratory conditions as well as under the complex natural disposal conditions.

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This paper introduces the results of a project initiated by Cantho University (CTU) on the introduction of micro-credits for addressing the environmental pollution in Vietnam’s craft villages. At Tan Phu Dong, a traditional rice powder production village in Sa Dec, Dong Thap, all wastes from domestic and production activities and animal husbandry were freely disposed into open water sources. This practice led to a negative impact on the local environment. With the financial support provided by the Bread for the World (BfdW), a micro-credit program was initiated in which farmers could borrow money to construct a biogas plant to treat animal husbandry and domestic wastes. In addition, the staff transferred biogas plant construction technology to the local masons and organized training courses on biogas plant operation and maintenance and biogas usage for the farmers and the local officials. 61 farmers borrowed money from the program to construct their biogas plants, followed by more than 250 farmers that constructed their biogas plants by their own finance after realizing the positive benefits of biogas plants. As result, the environmental pollution issue was solved step-by-step, thereby helping enhance the living conditions of the local community. / Bài báo này trình bày biện pháp sử dụng nguồn quỹ tín dụng nhỏ để các hộ dân cải thiện tình trạng ô nhiễm môi trường ở các làng nghề Việt Nam. Tại làng nghề làm bột Tân Phú Đông - Sa Đéc - Đồng Tháp, các loại chất thải sinh hoạt, chất thải sản xuất và chăn nuôi xả thải bừa bãi đã gây ô nhiễm môi trường nghiêm trọng. Với kinh phí tài trợ từ tổ chức Bánh mỳ cho thế giới (BfdW), các cán bộ trường Đại học Cần Thơ đã tổ chức cho người dân luân phiên vay vốn để xây dựng hầm ủ khí sinh học xử lý chất thải chăn nuôi và chất thải sinh hoạt. Bên cạnh đó còn tổ chức các lớp tập huấn chuyển giao công nghệ xây hầm ủ khí sinh học cho thợ xây địa phương, hướng dẫn vận hành và bảo dưỡng hầm ủ cho người dân và cán bộ địa phương. Thông qua nguồn vốn vay của dự án, có 61 hộ dân đã xây dựng hầm ủ khí sinh học và trên 250 hộ dân khác đã tự đầu tư xây dựng khi thấy được lợi ích của hầm ủ. Nhờ đó tình trạng ô nhiễm môi trường từng bước được giải quyết góp phần cải thiện điều kiện sống của người dân tại địa phương.

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