How to integrate geochemistry at affordable costs into reactive transport for large-scale systems

This international workshop entitled “How to integrate geochemistry at affordable costs into reac-tive transport for large-scale systems” was organized by the Institute of Resource Ecology of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf in Feb-ruary 2020. A mechanistic understanding and building on that an appropriate modelling of geochemical processes is essential for reliably predicting contaminant transport in groundwater systems, but also in many other cases where migration of hazardous substances is expected and consequently has to be assessed and limited. In case of already present contaminations, such modelling may help to quantify the threads and to support the development and application of suitable remediation measures. Typical application areas are nuclear waste disposal, environmental remediation, mining and milling, carbon capture & storage, or geothermal energy production. Experts from these fields were brought together to discuss large-scale reactive transport modelling (RTM) because the scales covered by such pre-dictions may reach up to one million year and dozens of kilometers. Full-fledged incorporation of geochemical processes, e.g. sorption, precipitation, or redox reactions (to name just a few important basic processes) will thus create inacceptable long computing times. As an effective way to integrate geochemistry at affordable costs into RTM different geochemical concepts (e.g. multidimensional look-up tables, surrogate functions, machine learning, utilization of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis etc.) exist and were extensively discussed throughout the workshop. During the 3-day program of the workshop keynote and regular lectures from experts in the field, a poster session, and a radio lab tour had been offered. In total, 40 scientists from 28 re-search institutes and 8 countries participated. The focus of the workshop was: (1) To provide and discuss existing geochemical concepts in reactive transport modelling to describe sorption and related retardation processes of contaminants on a variety of sedi-ments and rocks. (2) To explicitly set focus on large-scale natural systems as experienced, e.g., in nuclear waste disposal, carbon capture & storage, environmental remediation, or geothermal applications. (3) To explore how the discussed approaches can be integrated at affordable costs into cur-rent paradigms in THMC models and long-term safety assessments in general. (4) To promote the exchange of scientific knowledge and practical experience between the workshop participants in an efficient way. Based on the intensive discussions and very posi-tive feedback on the workshop, a continuation is intended to bundle and strengthen the respective research activities and stipulate the international network that started to form during the conference days.