Development of Methods for Assessing Uranium Mobility in Groundwater

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CBCL has identified a business need within their engineering consultancy to water utilities to develop newtools to evaluate uranium mobility in source water. Once developed and validated, these tools and techniqueswill enhance their capabilities and greatly improve the services they can offer. Uranium is a naturally occurringelement found within certain types of soil and rock formations. Under certain environmental conditions, it canbecome soluble and contaminate groundwater systems that are used to supply drinking water. Prior to thedevelopment of potable water supplies it would be useful to have a reliable way to test geological material forits potential to release uranium into groundwater under varying geochemical conditions. This informationwould aid in groundwater resource evaluations, and mitigate the risk of developing a groundwater supply thatcould produce uranium concentrations that are harmful to human health. The removal of uranium fromgroundwater is technically challenging and expensive. The objective of this research project is to develop andvalidate new testing methods for evaluating uranium mobility from aquifer materials. The testing procedurewill be applied to assess uranium leaching potential from rock materials sampled from exploratory boreholesdrilled in a potential municipal groundwater supply. Once validated this new testing method would provide avaluable tool that CBCL could use to support groundwater resource assessments for a variety of clients.