The goal of the project was to develop a functional prototype of an environmental
risk assessment parameter database on the World-Wide Web. The ability to develop a
consolidated environmental database has become possible due to the phenomenal growth
of the Internet and the World-Wide Web over the past few years. A large number of
environmental resources do currently exist; however, with the large volume of
information available, access, management, reliability, and retrievability have become
increasingly difficult.
To illustrate the prototype database, a practical environmental concern and the
tools necessary to evaluate and characterize that concern were needed. Uranium (�������U)
daughters leaching from abandoned mill tailing piles at three abandoned uranium mines
in southwestern Colorado were chosen to demonstrate the database concept. The
RESRAD environmental pathway modeling code served as the evaluation and
characterization tool. Due to the size and complexity of RESRAD, a single radionuclide
release rate equation was isolated as a controllable component of the code. The equation
was a small part of the water pathway factor and examined the rate at which
radionuclides absorbed in soil were leached by infiltrating water. This serves as the
source term for groundwater contamination and directly applies to the �������U progeny
leaching from mill tailing piles scenario. Parameters selected from the equation dealt with the background data that directly influenced the mobility of contaminates in the environment. Environmental data for the three Colorado sites were gathered and interpreted. Probability Density Functions (PDFs) were developed for input parameters and the results were then incorporated into the web site. / Graduation date: 1998
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33793 |
| Date | 06 August 1997 |
| Creators | Potter, Nathan Kent |
| Contributors | Higley, Kathryn A. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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