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Characters of Fracture-filling Minerals in the KURT and Their Significance  

Lee, Seung-Yeop (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute)
Baik, Min-Hoon (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute)
Publication Information
Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea / v.20, no.3, 2007 , pp. 165-173 More about this Journal
Abstract
The KAERI Underground Research Tunnel (KURT) located in KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) was recently constructed following the site investigation in 2003. Its dimension is 180 m in length, 6 m in width, and 6 m in height, and it has a horseshoe-like cross-sec-lion and is located in the ground to the depth of 90 m. When the tunnel was dug into the ground with 100 m in length, fresh rocks, weathered rocks and fracture-filling materials were taken and examined by mineralogical and chemical analyses. There are phyllosilicate minerals such as illite, smectite and chlorite including calcite, which are filling some faults and cracks of the KURT rock. The illite and smectite usually coexist in the fracture, where their content ratio is different according to which mineral is predominant. There are high concentrations of U and Th in the rocks coated with iron-oxides and filled with secondary materials as compared with those in the fresh rocks. It seems that the radionuclides, which are slowly leached from the parent rocks or exist as a dissolved form in the groundwater and hydrothermal solution, may have been migrated along the fractures and thereafter selectively sorbed and coprecipitated on the iron-oxides and the fracture-filling materials. These results will be very useful far the evaluation of environmental factors affecting the nuclides migration and retardation when long-term safety is considered to the geological disposal of high-level radioactive wastes in the future.
Keywords
KURT; Uranium; Thorium; Fracture-filling minerals; High-level radioactive wastes;
Citations & Related Records
Times Cited By KSCI : 2  (Citation Analysis)
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