Study on investigation of microbial effects for geological disposal, 2 (Joint research)

Tochigi, Yoshikatsu; Yoshikawa, Hideki; Aoki, Kazuhiro ; Yui, Mikazu; Asano, Takahiro*; Honjo, Hideko*; Haginuma, Masashi*; Kawakami, Yasushi*; Suzuki, Kazunori*

Results of joint research on fiscal year 2006 between Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and Institute of Research and Innovative (IRI) titled as "Study on investigation of microbial effects for geological disposal" are described in this report. The objective of this study is to develop a method for estimating microbial effects for barrier performance of geological disposal site. The modeling was performed to examine the effect on the change in groundwater chemistry (mainly by electron acceptors) by microbial metabolism as well as microbial activities. In order to use the data (chemical composition, biomass, etc.) in the MINT code, groundwater was collected from the drilled well prepared for chemical and microbial analyses of groundwater. The well was prepared in observation field near Horonobe Underground Research Center of JAEA in fiscal year 2006. Then, numerical modeling using collected data of groundwater with numerical modeling program code "MINT" considering microbial effects was carried out. The modeling was carried out to evaluate the microbial effect for stability of chemical and microbial composition of groundwater. As the result of the modeling, relatively low microbial effect for groundwater composition was observed in particular for the concentration of dissolved methane, methanogen, sulfur reducing bacteria (SRB) and sulfur ion. The result shows that low redox potential is stable in the well in spite of shallow depth.