Approaches and algorithms for groundwater flow modeling in support of site investigations and safety assessment of the Forsmark site, Sweden

• Methods to support integrated site characterization of fractured rock are developed.
• Hybrid continuous porous medium and discrete fracture network models are applied.
• We embed model scales from individual contaminant sources to regional hydrology.

SummaryThe Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) has in 2011 finalized a safety assessment project, SR-Site, with the objective to assess the long term safety of a final repository for spent nuclear fuel at Forsmark in Northern Uppland of Sweden. Prior to the safety assessment, comprehensive site investigations were conducted at the Forsmark site to build understanding and characterize the site. An essential part of the site investigations were to describe hydrological properties and characteristics of the site and use this to assess the groundwater pathway. The geological structural context of the crystalline bedrock at Forsmark implied a fracture network concept was the natural description for interpreting site data and assessing the groundwater pathway. Of primary importance to the description of the fracture system was the assignment of down-borehole flow-logging measurements to individual fractures identified by imaging techniques, providing the basis to relate hydrogeological characteristics such as anisotropy and heterogeneity to the geological structural framework. Also, the key input quantities to the assessment of long-term safety can be closely related to the derived fracture flow-rate distributions. Key success factors for this project were to develop and test strategies for modeling methodologies, as described in this paper, from an early stage, hand-in-hand with the planning and phased acquisition of site data as well as successive safety assessments.