David King: So, I guess, we can go ahead and get started so wanted to welcome everybody.
David King: To deep for home disposal technical session.
David King: southeastern GSA so there's got to be.
David King: ready three talks in the beginning.
David King: rod mccollum is kind of talk about.
David King: building confidence and bomb disposal and then it was recorded presentation room rod ball Sir on.
David King: operational aspects of.
David King: Of the disposal of.
David King: radioactive waste in horizontal boreholes and then i'm going to talk about.
David King: The geological trains in the southeast and how they might fit into into some feature to sponsor plans so.
David King: Then they'll be a break.
David King: 910 and 15 minute break, and so we can take a break.
David King: For additional questions if they run beyond the 20 minutes allotted to each of the presentations.
David King: And then at 925 will go into.
David King: what's leveled and discussion and that discussion is 15 minutes and lauren lauren is going to take over at that point and and be the chair and moderator for the for the next set of three talks they'll follow that and then i'll let her introduce those we'll get to that point.
David King: So.
David King: It would be good if.
David King: When you ask a question, if you wouldn't mind.
David King: Perhaps i'm muting your MIC and and and give us your video as well, and tell us.
David King: Who, you are and.
David King: Who you're with and that will help us context sure your question.
David King: If you want to send a question by chat that's fine to.
David King: The this speaker doesn't see your chat then then then i'll probably see your chat and i'll read it and get the speaker to to react to that.
David King: As my job to to make sure that the talks and questions and after 20 minutes and we go next one, so we can keep on the schedule with GSA but like I said don't be don't be time during that break at the end if there's spillover questions.
David King: rhonda do you want to say a few things also about the context of all this, and those can.
rodmccullum: yeah my name is rod mccollum i'm with nuclear energy Institute and i've been working on the problem of high level radioactive waste disposal for over 20 years.
rodmccullum: It is an extremely vexing problem, most of the activity in the world in the United States has been on traditional mind geologic repository so i've gotten to know a lot of geologists over the years and i'm you know honored to be among geologists here at this conference today.
rodmccullum: So we're going to have three related presentations here i'm going to talk about the topic of how one builds public confidence in.
rodmccullum: High level radioactive waste disposal in the context of a deeper hole in the context of the deep borehole that might be co located with an advanced reactor so essentially a nuclear reactor that would dispose of its own waste.
rodmccullum: And i'll focus on the regulatory construct there and David, if you want to go ahead and put my first slide up with would most appreciated because.
rodmccullum: In the United States or really anywhere globally, is how do you how do you build public confidence will you build it by building trust and.
rodmccullum: What connects trust to the public mindset is the regulatory framework, so i'm going to focus a lot on how the US regulatory framework could work to.
rodmccullum: build a public confidence in a deep borehole associated with an advanced reactor so David if you'll go to the first slide the next slide I guess it was that's that's the first slide introducing me which i've already done.
rodmccullum: So this is a topic that's been studied a lot by not just geologists but by social scientists as well.
rodmccullum: The National Academy of Sciences and the International Atomic Energy Agency, who have both looked at this, as well as.
rodmccullum: The US program which was focused up until 2010 on a mind geologic repository and yucca mountain Nevada that's the most studied piece of real estate in in the world, so i'm sure if you're in the geology business, you probably have some experience with yucca mountain.
rodmccullum: In and after it ran aground the President Obama at the time I established a blue ribbon Commission.
rodmccullum: All three of these entities, the US blue ribbon Commission and the IAEA in the nas all agree that an adaptive or phased management approach is best for building public confidence, the idea, you have flexibility, you can adjust to new information.
rodmccullum: And you make decisions and have the capability to revisit them now.
rodmccullum: These repositories have to isolate the waist for a million years So how do you be flexible and and still do something so long lasting well the yucca mountain program wasn't that way, the.
rodmccullum: program is not adaptive or phased it was it is still the law linear I had had a defined endpoint that is unfortunately it's not gotten to the David if you can go to the next slide please.
rodmccullum: There we go, this is the current US regulatory framework, it was not designed for what we're going to talk about today, but it does contain the elements and, if applied in an adaptive or phased manner.
rodmccullum: These elements can in fact be quite successful in putting us on a path to build public confidence in this, we have two disposal regulations, one for a generic repository that was written a long time ago, before the science of modern.
rodmccullum: performance assessment of radioactive material in geologic formations existed, we have 10 CFR parts 63, which is only specific to yucca mountain, so we don't currently have.
rodmccullum: A disposal regulation that would fit a borehole in the United States, but I would tell you that that's Okay, because.
rodmccullum: If you're proceeding in an adaptive or phase manner, you would want to develop the regulation after you had some experience and you've learned.
rodmccullum: We do have an existing storage regulation which allows Florida year licenses it's how we store.
rodmccullum: Used fuel at or spent fuel or high level radioactive waste at our current reactor sites we've loaded over 3000 what's called dry storage systems, these are either silos or evolves that sit outside the plant on a concrete pad in accordance with part 72.
rodmccullum: Part 72 allows you to license the storage facilities for 40 years at a time with options for 40 year renewals.
rodmccullum: So you could license a borehole free storage, in fact, there is one of the storage systems that's in ground it's still at the surface, but.
rodmccullum: You you essentially put the canisters that apparently in concrete silos on the on the pad you put him down in the pads so subsurface in a very.
rodmccullum: shallow sense storage has been done under Part 72 So if you went in with a storage license for a deep overhaul of course it would have to be retrievable.
rodmccullum: The technologies that Dr king and rod bolts, are going to talk about R amp D retrievable so as long as you meet that retrieve ability standard for 40 years.
rodmccullum: You could license a borehole for storage and then, as you learn from that period of storage, you would develop a disposal regulation with public input.
rodmccullum: That would allow you to confidently licenses for permanent disposal, which is the ultimate goal the holy grail of nuclear waste.
rodmccullum: That in this country, we have not yet achieved with the High Level ways we have a repository for low level waste in Mexico knows the waste isolation power plan, some of you may be pilot project.
rodmccullum: i'm on the reactor side, so you may be familiar with that you also have to consider the national environmental policy act, it would be disingenuous to license something for four years, that you might make permanent.
rodmccullum: So underneath you'd have to consider the environmental consequences of permanent disposal and Dr king's presentation will tell us how we know enough to be able to do that about these long term.
rodmccullum: impacts, so we would do nepa assuming it's permanent, even though we're only licensing it for storage.
rodmccullum: As we develop the regulation which will provide the public confidence that he can indeed be permanent one other thing that bears note here is the do we standard contract for disposal.
rodmccullum: Do he was supposed to the Department of Energy not the Department of Education was supposed to move us fuel away from commercial reactor sites and dispose of it and yucca mountain beginning in 1998.
rodmccullum: They missed that deadline and have made no progress since 2010 so the utilities all sue the department and recover their storage costs under.
rodmccullum: Part 961 the standard contract because God has breached that contract new reactors would have a contract, because you have to have a disposal contract to license a commercial reactor in the United States but.
rodmccullum: They would not be able to recover damages during their operating life that they're due date is not 1998 obviously because it's in the past, their due date is at some point, after the reactor shuts down.
rodmccullum: So an advanced reactor or a new reactor has an incentive to want to maybe pursue its own disposal options because.
rodmccullum: It is unlike the current fleet of reactors, and we have 94 operating reactors in the United States today.
rodmccullum: they're reimbursed for their costs by do eat by the Federal Government in accordance with those lawsuits and settlements, as are.
rodmccullum: The shutdown plants, and we have 19 of those and they recover all their storage costs so.
rodmccullum: That issue of who pays for it, how and when is also important, it is also governed by Regulation, but you certainly need to be able to gain public confidence to demonstrate the bs that the cost of disposable.
rodmccullum: can be met, and I think rod walters presentation will address that to an extent, the next slide gives us a little bit of global context.
rodmccullum: David if you can get us to there, yes, thank you, as I mentioned, the United States program has run aground.
rodmccullum: yucca mountain there's not been any work done there and in 10 years now.
rodmccullum: Finland actually successfully license the Finnish regulatory process did build sufficient public confidence that they got a license to build a repository mine traditional mind repository and Center construction.
rodmccullum: France as pursuing an adaptive phased approach they are moving into a pilot phase they've identified a region they're working with the regional government to.
rodmccullum: determine just exactly how in that region, they will dispose but their regulatory process has been adaptable to the local governments, concerns and is moving forward, Switzerland is.
rodmccullum: going through a sighting process that similarly adaptive and based, as is Canada, Sweden is in the licensing process their licensing process is a little bit more protracted.
rodmccullum: It through the environmental review concerns have been raised and are being addressed so you know again a lot of this depends on what the regulations are and how much confidence, the regulations and still in the public.
rodmccullum: If we can go to the next slide.
rodmccullum: As I mentioned the advanced reactor should want to be built the southeast and should one not want to wait for the end of its life for the government to show up in dispose of its nuclear waste.
rodmccullum: It is a unique opportunity to pursue the borehole disposal.
rodmccullum: As I mentioned they'll be at the end of the long line the Department of Energy will someday begin meeting it's contracts to the existing fleet we don't know how and it won't be until after all of those contracts, because the part 961 specifies and oldest fuel first.
rodmccullum: receipt strategy and spent fuel disposal cost spent fuel storage costs or, as I mentioned before, will always be part of the low cost that's different and.
rodmccullum: In the nuclear industry economics or or what's going to make or break us we feel we're very cost competitive against wind and solar.
rodmccullum: Against gas we're struggling right now, the reason there are 19 shut down reactors in part is because that they can't compete in markets where.
rodmccullum: The low cost of electricity is driven by gas prices that are very low, as well as the subsidies for renewable if you had an even playing field versus.
rodmccullum: Anybody who's carbon free gets the same breaks in terms of providing electricity, we would do very well against wind and solar but, again, we struggle against gas, but if we're if we're paying indefinite storage costs and under the current framework of dry cast storage.
rodmccullum: That is not going to help nuclear there's economic viability very much and it's going to go against the United States his efforts to decarbonize you're hearing a lot about that and even when you have a congress in administration that is not.
rodmccullum: keen on decarbonisation is the last one was you still had tremendous progress in terms of reducing america's carbon footprint driven at the statehouse level.
rodmccullum: Driven by state governors and driven by private corporations Bill Gates is very supportive of nuclear and and companies like Google, have been working to reduce their carbon footprints and.
rodmccullum: You know I don't think decarbonisation is a political issue, I think it's just the basic human survival instinct has kicked in.
rodmccullum: And we will move towards it, but our ability to use to use nuclear is to do this is heavily dependent on economics and so.
rodmccullum: Having an economical solution and I know rod balter is going to talk about why we believe boreholes are an economic solution, especially if you did it at at the reactor.
rodmccullum: And because these advanced reactors have yet to make their decisions on what storage technology they will use they could buy the traditional dry cast they're they're very expensive.
rodmccullum: least a couple million dollars a pop there, and you know again we've loaded over 3000 of them, so you can start doing the math but they could.
rodmccullum: They could commit to those technologies and they would make those those casts are transportable.
rodmccullum: But then, you know do he has to show up and transport them.
rodmccullum: or they could commit to a borehole and since the sighting processes.
rodmccullum: For advanced reactors are still ahead of us and the sighting processes for deep boreholes would still be ahead of us again those citing processes would be governed by Regulation.
rodmccullum: This, indeed, is an opportunity, if you did them at the same time, the the public confidence in the reactor would be bolstered by the fact that.
rodmccullum: They know what's going to happen to the waste, right now, at all the operating reactors in the United States there is some uncertainty in terms of.
rodmccullum: When the waste leave everybody knows it's stored safely in these these These containers.
rodmccullum: Everybody knows their transportable but nobody knows when the federal government is going to show up and that's even true after the reactor shuts down if you go to the next slide David, this is, in essence, the presentation, in a nutshell.
rodmccullum: And i'm waiting for that next slide to to pop up here.
rodmccullum: Here we go this kind of shows how the regular regulatory contact construct in the public input construct fit together and I, I think, Jim Hamilton.
rodmccullum: he's a he's a consultant that worked with us on this for helping make this work in its illustrate of not just for this, but for a lot of things, so you have.
rodmccullum: three layers of this, you have the national environmental policy act process which has shown on the bottom, you have the NRC licensing process which is shown on the top.
rodmccullum: And you have the facility signing process which is shown in the middle and the goal here is for all three of these things to work in harmony and to work at the same time, in an adaptive in phase manner, can the United States didn't do it this way yeah come out.
rodmccullum: The countries I highlighted that have been successful, have done it this way.
rodmccullum: So you start out with you have a storage licensing framework and in parallel you're developing their disposal regulation.
rodmccullum: retrieval is absolutely critical to this as well, as you know, if it takes longer than 40 years you can renew the license, but if you do that, you have to assure retrieve ability for four more years.
rodmccullum: So you know you start investigating your site, you find a volunteer.
rodmccullum: You know you do some technical analysis for the site evaluation and, as you can see the orange boxes at the bottom of the facility, citing process aspect of this um.
rodmccullum: You know you're involving the Community at every step, the Community has input to the nepa process, I would suggest that if I was going to do this and and given state.
rodmccullum: I would make the state o'clock rating agency and the development of the environmental impact statement which is for disposal.
rodmccullum: Dr king's going to talk about the development of the disposal safety case so you're doing that and and that's really what undergirds the environmental impact statement.
rodmccullum: it's also, as you can see those orange arrows pointing upwards informing the development of the disposal regulation.
rodmccullum: And they're pointing upwards through a Community interaction process and a technical analysis process so you've got those two the blue processes.
rodmccullum: In the top of the green and the orange processes in the bottom of the green you've got those processes going in parallel.
rodmccullum: it's interesting in Canada They ran the Community or the public involvement process first and when they got down to two sites now they're running the technical process now they're drilling holes in the ground and investigating the geology.
rodmccullum: yucca mountain we we spent $11 billion on a scientific process that did have a public process running in parallel with it, but they weren't connected in the ways that we're envisioning it being connected here.
rodmccullum: So, as you get technical results, and as you get Community results you move forward you end up with a disposal regulation, and if you can meet that disposal regulation.
rodmccullum: And there's a lot of experience here every one of these countries I mentioned, as well as several others, has a disposable regulation, so we kind of know.
rodmccullum: And I think Dr king's presentation will point to this we kind of know what the bogeys are in terms of you know how low.
rodmccullum: radiation levels, need to be to ensure the safety of future civilizations and really that's what this is all about is assuring.
rodmccullum: The safety of future generations, we talk about something called intergenerational equity, which is you know.
rodmccullum: there's absolutely no reason to do geologic disposal if that's not important because.
rodmccullum: We can start safely and we can keep renewing the storage licenses and the casket old, we can we can make repairs to them and we could just keep doing that, but then that would be pushing.
rodmccullum: You know the responsibility for the waste burden that we created to generate electricity for our needs on to our children and our grandchildren.
rodmccullum: You know just in the time i've been working this issue in which the United States has not succeeded another generations past I raised my kids in this job and they're now in the adult world hoping that the world comes with plenty of carbon free energy.
rodmccullum: So there are negotiations at both of these.
rodmccullum: And you know, there are times you'll go backwards and forwards if you've got the safety case that Dr King will talk about you've got a sound basis for believing you can dispose.
rodmccullum: And and you'll be negotiating with with the public you'll be examining and re examining the science and the technical work.
rodmccullum: On the to get to a regulation that everybody agrees that we meet this yes, we can make it permanent, we can make it safe.
rodmccullum: At that point, you then now have your ongoing facility and you're working towards that goal you'll have things like.
rodmccullum: Confirmation after all, after the reactor shuts down and after all the waste is in the morals you'll have a period of time where you're you know again making sure.
rodmccullum: That it performed as your regulation required it to perform you met the regulation and prospectively but you'll also look retrospectively.
rodmccullum: To see that you, you R amp D doing that in future generations, they can ignore it, I mean that one of the basic concepts of geologic disposal is is that.
rodmccullum: You make this safe for future generations, even if they don't know it's there if we lose our institutional memory of our civilization goes away and another civilization replaces that has no clue what we did on that piece of land.
rodmccullum: they'll still be safe, they don't have to protect themselves because we've protected them, but certainly they're free to continue to monitor, as long as they remember it's there as long as they want to monitor.
rodmccullum: So in conclusion, we believe that there is in the existing regulatory framework.
rodmccullum: In in what organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the National Academy of Sciences have studied in our own blue ribbon Commission.
rodmccullum: There is a framework for getting started for getting started whenever anyone would want to get started with one of these projects.
rodmccullum: And that framework can successfully build public confidence as as the frameworks have several other countries have done and are doing.
rodmccullum: With mine repositories the borehole opportunity is unique, the borehole opportunity has some very important safety advantages over mine geologic repositories and.
rodmccullum: At that I will offer an opportunity to take questions or otherwise, let Dr king and red ball to talk tell you a little bit more about the unique advantages of this technology.
rodmccullum: So i'll pause there and somebody can help me with the technology if there are questions on, I do not see me in the chat room.
David King: Thank you rhonda.
David King: was very informative and I think probably the stimulant a lot of questions so i'm gonna.
David King: have to tinker with getting the next presentation setup here.
David King: In the video player so.
David King: I just invite those of you who are attending to to unmute your MIC and ask.
David King: Any questions and.
rodmccullum: I haven't assuming I don't have to use my camera when you start on the next presentation comes up or do I do I.
rodmccullum: Know down below.
rodmccullum: And if I if there are questions on the regulatory side as we go through the operational and the geological side i'll stay with the thing throughout here so.
David King: whoa.
David King: Our our attendees are thinking thinking of their questions, I have a question that's come to mind.
All right.
David King: Since you're talking about public acceptance.
David King: You have any suggestions about how to approach.
David King: let's say that you have a Community where there would be an opportunity to have one of these.
David King: disposal sites.
David King: And let's say it's not near an existing reactor where people already know that there's there's an area there where.
David King: there's there's ways to.
David King: approach.
David King: Discussing that with the Community and its safety, do you have any thoughts about that.
rodmccullum: Well, I think you know, one of the things they'd be countries that have been successful do is is they start out with a solicitation.
rodmccullum: i'm not sure anybody's gone to a community and say hey we like you.
rodmccullum: Now, with the advanced reactor opportunity if the Community is interested in energy generating facility, both because of the Communities economic needs.
rodmccullum: As as well as just their their interest in in carbon free energy that's a great place to start if you wanted to, as you mentioned that in just to do a borehole disposal project, independent of an advanced reactor I would start.
rodmccullum: With the solicitation I would start with making a couple things clear in that solicitation and one is that what are the benefits of the project, why would the Community want to do this.
rodmccullum: And and two is the notion that the Community gets a voice and how the Community gets a voice and that goes back to.
rodmccullum: You know the the adaptive and phase that you know hey we'd like to consider story here.
rodmccullum: And we'd like to engage you in a dialogue on how we could make storage into permanent disposal so if the Community sees the benefits again you.
rodmccullum: You know, put it out as a solicitation advertise it were in areas you think you're interested in, but those two elements I think are key is is you, you communicate the benefits and you communicate the role.
rodmccullum: that the Community is going to have in the process so it's not you doing something to them it's them participating in something that mutually wants to be enough.
David King: You know communities can be about you know not in my backyard.
rodmccullum: There will always.
David King: get started and.
rodmccullum: yeah that's that'll always be present in that question always to be answered there, and this is why regulation is so important is.
rodmccullum: Is the not in my backyard mentality representative of the Community is representative of an outside advocacy.
rodmccullum: Group is it representative of a minority in the Community, and so you have a regulatory process.
rodmccullum: And you're working with the elected officials of the state and local government in that regulatory process that's that's one of the key reasons I suggested that a State should be cooperating agency in a nepa process.
rodmccullum: Because now the elected officials of that community are part of assuring it's safe.
rodmccullum: So, yes.
rodmccullum: But you'll never, never have one of these projects that is completely free of the not my backyard element, and you just have to address it with processes people trust.
David King: Other questions for rah.
rodmccullum: rah i'll sit back and listen to the next two and i'll still be here if somebody wants to take us back into regulatory space.
David King: Maybe something comes.
David King: to mind as we go through this and as a sibling get to the break.
David King: At 910 have another opportunity to to.
David King: engage with rod i'm going to.
David King: queue up RON paul's presenter presentation, which is recorded and I see that rods here with us this morning good morning.
Rod Baltzer: Good morning, Dr king.
David King: So.
David King: i'm going to play this if if any of you.
David King: Especially around broadband, Sir, if you if you're not satisfied with the way this is sounding are looking just let me know I there's a couple things I have to do to make sure that you guys hear this so don't start immediately, why do my computer's settings so hang on a second.
David King: Hello i'm rob bolts or i'm the chief operating officer and deep isolation excited to be here at the southeast section of the.
Rod Baltzer: sounds good to me 70th annual meeting.
David King: But talking about disposal of radioactive waste in horizontal hormones, so our company in specializing in this, and this may be a new topic so we'll talk about who we are and kind of the technology in general.
David King: So first who we are, so we do offer the disposal of spent nuclear fuel in boreholes from the surface deep underground.
David King: And you can do this in a variety of rocks sedimentary igneous metamorphic and leverages the oil and gas technology that developed horizontal drilling.
David King: With nuclear handling, so this place is an individual spent nuclear fuel assembly into a corrosion resistant canister and takes a deep underground isolated permanently for at least a million years.
David King: So we, we are not alone in this, and so we have developed the innovative ECO system to tackle this global problem, so that includes the.
David King: foundation, the formation suitability and is that the right geology what does that repository look like what kind of constraints, do you have on your footprint.
David King: And what kind of canister do you need for that specific type of waste and other aspects, we also have about five peer reviewed papers and other public documents you can find those out on our website deep isolation COM.
David King: We have already partnered with Bekele and nac international and schlumberger is our drilling technical advisor us we've got kind of world global known organizations that handle nuclear waste and drilling technologies.
David King: we've also started to engage with a variety of stakeholders across the globe, these include environmental organizations.
David King: non governmental organizations universities communities just outreach and really Our job is to listen, what are the concerns what what are people worried about is there a way we can.
David King: Implement that into our technology to make sure that we address the concerns and then maybe most importantly we've also started interacting with clients.
David King: And so they have the actual responsibility that typically national radioactive waste management organizations, and so we want to understand what that inventory, is what geology and regulatory aspects they're looking at and and other things we can do to help with that.
David King: But let's talk a little bit about stakeholder participation, because that's really important to be able to deliver this is not easy, and so we want to make sure we bring together.
David King: All the international experts and working with our clients and develop a real custom program and so, if that local community has specific concerns.
David King: That may be able to be tailored and built into our disposal opportunity to to leverage that to allow some of those concerns to be addressed.
David King: Our solution isn't going to work for every community it's not going to work in every geology.
David King: So, so we recognize that, but only through this communication and this engagement or we're going to really understand what the issues are what we need to work around and and make sure that's dresses.
David King: So a little bit more specifics on how it works so generally we're going to start by drilling at the surface or we're going to fold in case in line this borehole as we go deep.
David King: And we're looking at kilometer to three kilometers deep ideally we're looking for something that we can test and monitor and determine that it's been isolated for over a million years from surface.
David King: We can use ice testing to do that will then place that waste in that yellow area, you see, at the bottom and that's our repository where the the spent fuel will go.
David King: As I said, this will be fully case the line and submitted from the end of the repository all the way to surface, so it went very smooth the general curve at curves been exaggerated in this graphic.
David King: it's a much gentler curve than that because we don't want any canisters to get stuck or or have any issues with that.
David King: So some of the benefits, this is thousands of people have surface typically what you see as a mind repository for the disposable spent nuclear fuel around the world and that's been a traditional method.
David King: Here in the US that's been yucca mountain in Nevada the repository proposed there that's that's been installed for for decades, and so this would be deeper than a mind repository it's also smaller so we're looking at.
David King: About 30 inch boreholes that reduce the size and then disturbed zone so as you drill down or you're disturbing the rock around it for a mind repository.
David King: You might look at about an 18 foot entry tunnel and so that would be closer to the five meters instead of the 76 centimeters about 30 inches that went back here kind of maximum end of our for all.
David King: We can go larger than that, but for most spent nuclear fuel simply means that as big as you would need to go that will handle a pressurized watering reactor assembly, which is one of the larger ones in the world.
David King: And then, since we do go horizontal we can actually space those famous proves out they don't have to be stacked on top of each other and they don't have any stalking weight that is rest on the bottom of the mobile home.
David King: We do expect it to reducing environment at def will confirm that on a site by site basis we can use corrosion resistant canisters if needed.
David King: That those will survive for 10s of thousands of years, but we do have a peer reviewed paper regarding that and it noted that it would be at least 40,000 years.
David King: For a general corrosion and then we would of course plug the vertical axis shaft once we're complete as long as you want to retrieve that fuel you leave that vertical axis Japanese is once you're done, you would go ahead and and.
David King: perforate chasing add backfill and seals and plugs through that and make that effectively a permanent repository that time.
David King: So waste handling, so there are decades of experience with taking spent nuclear fuel and this was an assembly St being put into.
David King: A dry cast this is being loaded underwater and and they've been doing this for decades already in the nuclear industry, this is going to be a similar type exercise where you could take these individual fuel assemblies.
David King: load them into a a disposable canister that's designed to hope that one individual sibley and then seal it up and so we've got a lot of experience, using similar items.
David King: Likewise there's lots of experience in the oil and gas industry with using wireline and tractor or other methods to drill a hole and then place tools and other things in that.
David King: retrieve them if you need to and all the monitoring that goes with that so again trying to marry up oil and gas, as well as the new prospects.
David King: We have demonstrated this so that little canister you saw on the previous side there at the end of the tool about three feet long little less than six inches in diameter and you see it here.
David King: A little shiny are being held in the Center picture there, but we had about 60 people that came, these were from environmental organizations are represented tribes some technical associations nuclear associations and even investors and local public.
David King: We took that canister went down about 2200 feet vertically and horizontally about 500 feet across.
David King: released the canister left that in place came back to the surface, to show no wires were attached and then went back down and retrieve that canister water backup the service just to prove that you can retrieve those types of cameras person.
David King: So the benefit of this solution, you actually minimize or eliminate transportation, he did this at the existing nuclear facility site for that fuel is stored.
David King: it's pretty compact so as few as 10 probably closer to 20 more holes are needed for a nuclear reactor to accommodate 60 years worth of spent nuclear fuel.
David King: And then the cost generally are about half of that remind repository and we're going to talk some more about costs and specifically related to enhance reactors.
David King: So.
David King: One of the things that kind of spurred this was a report that every in.
David King: This got released in December of 2020 it was the feasibility of borehole Colocation but the dance reactors are on site management have spent nuclear fuel.
David King: The topics in that report included regulatory considerations, the physical site spent nuclear fuel specifications, how would operate.
David King: How safe, that would be public acceptance and stakeholder engagement, as well as schedule and budget and then what to do next, one of the next steps.
David King: So full disclosure, we were contractor to every for a couple of sections on this and we've talked a little bit about the operations i'm going to cover exactly what we we thought about in the report and then also some cost and schedule methods as well.
David King: So this every report they really were focused on advanced reactors as there's been lots of discussion about global warming and climate change and providing lower carbon emissions.
David King: Vance nuclear reactors have come out and question continues to be raised, what about the ways.
David King: In the US, and worldwide that nobody has disposed of a single stick of a single Assembly have spent nuclear fuel.
David King: Finland is getting very close they've got a mind repository they should be operational, the next few years, but us effectively had been stalled yucca mountain and really doesn't have a solution at this point.
David King: But the only solution that we can use in the US is yucca mountain literally, that is the law of the land.
David King: So for advanced for actress coming on that uncertainty can provide some concern for some of the engage the stakeholders and that engagement.
David King: Is provide some concern of what's gonna happen with that over the long term, and so this effectively could say, well, if you want to cite an advanced nuclear facility, you could indeed put a borehole disposal facility next to it.
David King: And if you did that what would happen, and so this report kind of walk through some of that in a very high level.
David King: And so the report found that you know, there are some issues and gaps and there are some some things you need to look at, but the onsite integration of Oracle technology with advanced reactors may offer some unique and valuable options for future owner operator.
David King: So digging into that just a little bit no technical showstoppers were identified so you can drill a hole that size, we can.
David King: Put fuel down that's the size advanced factors are going to need and retrieve it if you needed to based on the regulations, etc, it does provide some flexibility and options and so.
David King: You know if you're a reactor operator, you now have some certainty of how long you'd have to store it before you could implement your disposal regime, because you would have disposal there.
David King: You wouldn't have to rely on a transportation network and some of the concerns about transporting to a long distance it's you can dispose of it on site.
David King: You could also, as you engage understand what the benefits and liabilities we're going to be over the long term.
David King: By accepting a plan here's the jobs and the creation that will be as well as the waist or what's going to happen and how that can be taken care of.
David King: As we look at the safety aspects of this it's not on the slide but you know we did model this and it's less than one mil around.
David King: A chest X Ray is 10 mil around 5000 miles is generally a millirem and so that's the dose it's less than a million that you would receive from a.
David King: borehole repository in generic circumstances to the surface at at a million and a half years, which is the peak that looks so it's a very low.
David King: dose rate very safe repository and it's got some interesting benefits that you know you can retrieve this for a period of time before you permanently dispose of it, so it does allow you to monitor it, make sure it's acting as you expected it to before you make it permanent.
David King: In the US, I mentioned yucca mountain is law of the land, you know there's a part 63, and that is specific to yet mountain and it's risk based part 60 is older and it's not.
David King: And, but part 72 allows you to use storage and you could store this Intel the disposal regulations kind of caught up with worlds and then go ahead and license it under a new regulation or 63 equivalent that wasn't specifically I come out when that's all available and allowable.
David King: Support is foundational and further evaluation is needed.
David King: So talk just a little bit here about cost so we had two different methods one was ongoing so there was no long term storage.
David King: I would go from the reactor building potentially you could have short term storage like a spin tool cool you know when a traditional sense I guess I call it.
David King: But you would repackage that into a disposal canister you would put that in a transfer cask.
David King: crawl that with a little transfer vehicle out to the placement rig and then dispose of it so outages are typically every 18 months for the kind of current fleet.
David King: And you can do something like this kind of on that same basis that, as you replace your fuel you dispose with fuel and you have some extra mobilization because you keep coming back to it which don't have any storage costs.
David King: The other aspect would be in the light method, so this would be where you actually put it into a longer term storage configuration and then you take it out of that storage configuration at the end of the life plan and do one disposal campaign and disposal at all at the same place.
David King: So some of the major assumptions we assume we're about a kilometer deep a kilometer half long into sedimentary rock we had a 44 centimeters diameter borehole that hold about 210 disposal canisters and needed about 10 or.
David King: 2100 assemblies total storage costs, you can see, on the screen and what those were based on some US averages, and we also had cost of a mind repository based on the yucca mountain life cycle costs.
David King: And the method basically more mobilization for ongoing you know storage in the life required storage, but no mobilization.
David King: So, as we look at kind of disposal cost scenarios and the base disposal for into playing ongoing was same same number holes same number of tool.
David King: One had mobilization the other end storage for mind repository this was based on this metric tons of heavy metal based on the yucca mountain cost.
David King: That is expected to have storage and storage after the reactor shut down.
David King: We assumed in here that the borehole could be licensed through the part 72 and available as soon as shut down so you wouldn't have that extra storage at the end of that life.
David King: For yucca mountain there's already a pretty long waiting list and so any new reactors would have a pretty significant wait time there.
David King: And so the savings were 62 to 69% within assuming What if you put two reactors, the same plan, what does that do.
David King: Of course you've got some efficiency us because you're battling one citing process one licensing process you've just got more boreholes now.
David King: And so you can get some additional savings and that was 75% of the mind repository costs in both of these in assumed that the mind repository was going to hold more than two reactors worth and it was just a metric tons of heavy metals so it's a linear kind of cost breakout.
David King: So that's the kind of summary of what we've done i'll note my email address with these conferences in virtual and everything else.
David King: Sometimes it's handy just to kind of reach out or set up a call feel free rod he bites.com and we've got questions and answers coming soon, and I look forward to chatting with you there, thank you very much.
David King: Hello i'm oddball term i'm the chief operating.
David King: I lead a recycler.
David King: So, thank you very much.
David King: I watched it several times and I learned something every time.
David King: So the question is for Rod, we have a few minutes to get to the next presentation setup.
David King: rhonda was a.
David King: speech speaking.
Richard Esposito: hey this is Richard i've got a question for rod.
Richard Esposito: rod what is what are probably the deepest depths that you would consider doing this, is there a is there a depth limit or a logical depth that you wouldn't want to go beyond.
Rod Baltzer: yeah so good question, so what we've always anticipated in our kind of safety cases that were in the US ASAP shallow end of deep drilling.
Rod Baltzer: And so we're in that kind of one to three kilometers for horizontal if it was a straight vertical more whole you know they typically look at you know, three to five kilometers deep and that's about as far as.
Rod Baltzer: They intend to go it's obviously possible to drill much deeper than that it would depend on the the site itself where those formations are and where you're trying to target.
Rod Baltzer: The goal isn't necessarily get as deep as you possibly can, but to find a safe layer of rock that's going to have a kind of a CAP rock foundation to prevent migration and so wherever that's that is kind of where we would want to target.
Richard Esposito: So, from a risk profile perspective going deeper is not necessarily always safer.
Rod Baltzer: Now I mean what we found is that even at this, you know kilometer deep and kilometer and a half long where we're 1000 times less than a 10 millirem standard, so you know we're we're extremely safe compared to the regulatory standard.
Rod Baltzer: Just because maybe you could go another you know, two kilometers deep and maybe gain another you know fraction of safety, probably isn't worth it, you know where we're we're as as as safe as we can do disposal we we believe in some of these configurations.
David King: Questions for for rod.
David King: right on Thank you, and if you in the other rob can stick around that will be that break right after I get through.
David King: my presentation and we can have a discussion, then.
David King: If the other questions.
Rod Baltzer: sounds great.
David King: So.
David King: seller buddy.
David King: i'm David king and I have a very distinguished group of co authors here, including Andrew Saturn every and.
David King: Richard Esposito selling company and RON Paul Sir deep isolation and john cutler.
David King: guess our associates, so I was part of this every funded project to.
David King: Review geology southeastern geology and how some there may be some suitable geological aspects for perhaps some future disposal deep disposal of ways in the southeast sure as judges you're quite familiar with the lay of the land in the southeast.
David King: i'm going to be.
David King: Speaking more about just Mississippi Alabama Georgia.
David King: Northern Florida and South Carolina in this, but many of the things that I have to say, are generic could be generic when applied to Tennessee North Carolina.
David King: And perhaps so in Virginia as well.
David King: The the southeast as as geologically.
David King: quite diverse coastal plain Piedmont valiant Ridge plateau areas.
David King: and
David King: So in interviewing this issue.
David King: I mean talk about two parts to this one is how the.
David King: suggested deep borehole setting guidelines.
David King: would apply to the southeast and then look specifically at some geological scenarios and situations, and the second part of this talk so in this document.
David King: Jeffrey jeffries and others took a look at.
David King: Citing guidelines are considerations for this.
David King: field tests which actually never took place but.
David King: Among the key items that they.
David King: said that deep disposal activities should look at would be depth some local basement rock.
David King: The presence of potential assure zones tech time features local seismicity.
David King: proximity to surface false.
David King: The potential recharge area for confined are furs to thermal heat flux and proximity to drawing and human development so.
David King: There are plenty of studies that relate to dip the local basement rocks, and this is just one of them.
David King: And this is, of course, the whole us but I share this with you to put the southeast into context so.
David King: Red is crystal and bedrock at the surface Brown is Christian bedrock down to about two kilometers, and so the zooms in on the southeast and you can see that.
David King: there's sort of this sweet spot where you were considering disposal and.
David King: crystal bedrock.
David King: Perhaps two kilometers is a little too deep for depends on.
David King: What funding is available, I suppose, but but there's this somewhere Crystal and bedrock is is suitably depth with a close encounter.
David King: In a ground want to certainly lightened Davis took a look at this area and depth to basement in this is in his feet it's not all just crystal rock down there there's lots of different sorts of materials just below the cost of playing cover.
David King: Jurassic.
David King: carbonates warm as.
David King: Red doesn't die bases paleozoic sedimentary rock man then below that crystal materials so that's consideration to.
David King: us for our true selves and tectonic features that concerned.
David King: This is an error magnetic map of the US and the bright colors or higher magnetic signatures and the Greens and blues are lower the inferred tectonic structures are marked in.
David King: black and white there i'm.
David King: relatively speaking, and good part of the southeast is relatively free of these kinds of structures, the appalachian tramping.
David King: person exception to that and some of the fracture zones coming up from the Gulf.
David King: This is the map that shows horizontal stress data for for the US, and there are some areas of us that have quite substantial stress fields, but in the southeast relatively not so there is this zone sort of along the.
David King: Georgia South Carolina border there seems to be some impressive stresses there in the bedrock and.
David King: Some.
David King: strikes the stresses in western Mississippi but generally it's kind of a sweet spot in that regard seismicity um, this is the US National seismic hazards map.
David King: That scale is in as a fraction of the acceleration of gravity and this map depicts expected to percent risk level for this sort of ground acceleration on.
David King: Of course that's the new Madrid fault zone that everyone knows southeastern sort of on the periphery of that this is the East Tennessee zone, and this is charleston South Carolina but otherwise bako se is relatively.
David King: and low seismic risk and consuming take a look there so Mississippi and Alabama Georgia panhandle Florida.
David King: proximity to the surface false or volcanoes volcanoes in the south, Texas this thing.
David King: Is the 48 state map if we zoom in.
David King: We just don't see those kinds of concerns surface structures.
David King: recharge areas for confined Doc for so the thought is we don't want to be near to research areas and in fact the sighting guidelines suggest hundred kilometers separation between returns areas and any drilling activity, this is the.
David King: percent slope map for the contiguous 48 states.
David King: Man isn't notes here as low really favors low hydraulic variance so is in no se and the exception, of course, the mountain terrain in the north.
David King: We basically don't have slope and recharge concerns and find out refers in this area.
David King: geothermal heat flux.
David King: Generally speaking, the sizing guidelines look recommend less than 75 million Watts per square meter.
David King: there's the US map.
David King: And zooming out on the southeast the blue is is extremely low Green is long and this slightly brighter areas is better heat flux, maybe 30 kilowatts per square meter which is below the signing guideline thresholds so for the southeast pre-lunch on there.
David King: This is this tiny geothermal gradient lamp for the contiguous states.
David King: And you can see, the scale over here in degree centigrade per kilometer and.
David King: The section of this area North Alabama.
David King: The numbers relatively low SES, as you can see.
David King: This is an estimated temperature map at four kilometers gaps and these are these colors are extremely low and.
David King: Higher so for the southeast accepting Western Mississippi.
David King: Yes, so conditions in the southeast.
David King: Proximity patrolling drilling well there's trying drawing a bit on the South is this is the national map of the distribution of petroleum drilling presence, this is.
David King: All else or green Gospels a purple.
David King: se.
David King: Just for references to the apalachicola there's to Mississippi river delta there's mobile Bay so in the western area yes.
David King: In the snow.
David King: human development.
David King: and distribution of population density per square mile South Florida.
David King: to dance, but the you know Atlanta area Birmingham a true would want to be there anyway se says a lot of.
David King: Areas where the population density is quite low not as long as in the West that.
David King: For the eastern us.
David King: Suitable geological terrains and Canada Iraq types were reviewed in the chapter four in this technical report the rod mentioned previously, was published by everyone.
David King: In December of last year, so in Chapter four there's a review of these geological terrains coast supplying Piedmont wrench plateau.
David King: The candidate rock types that have been discuss most commonly in the literature would be crystal and rocks various sorts of shale formations.
David King: And rock salt, I would not say to you that does have the only possible candidate rock types for those are the ones that have received the most discussion of the literature so i'll talk a little bit about them.
David King: So i'm again, this is our over the southeast so just in this very simplified cross section, where we see.
David King: plateau here the valley and ranch here, and then the Crystal and rocks underlying the coastal plain and then an overlying coastal plain settlements there's the there's the fall line which would be this fundamental boundary right here.
David King: For Christian rock disposal activities, of course, because the rocks are.
David King: near at the surface in the Piedmont, and of course below.
David King: The surface of the coast apply, and so I suppose, as long as those depths were not more than a couple of kilometers those might be acceptable targets.
David King: there's the location of the fall line, and this is a mountain I showed you earlier.
David King: and his phone line here so.
David King: Increasing thickness of settlements crispy goes south, and then there is a diversity of bedrock types just below the coastal plain and that would need to be explored by.
David King: By drilling interview of previous dig drilling activities to to understand the details for any particular site that you selected.
David King: Well, looking really deep below two kilometers and more below the surface is actually quite a diversity of rocks beneath the coastal plain in the southeast including.
David King: Drastic salts granites crystal rocks Hieronymus metamorphic rocks son of holly to form metamorphic rocks shales or Kostas and mechanics in the south Georgia basins.
David King: If disposal activities wherever.
David King: directed a targets, more than two kilometers in depth, this might this sort of a mount might be a consideration.
David King: Looking at a really deep cross the Cross section and notice this depth scale his 10 kilometers you can see that to Crystal and terrains.
David King: Our editor native a surface more in the.
David King: Inner part of the coastal plain and so that would probably be shallow target for drilling into Crystal and rocks valley and rich is relatively thick cover over crust and probably to be more disposal targets in the actual ballin rich proper them to try to get into Kristen rocks here.
David King: salt targets, there are plenty of salt Downs in parts of.
David King: The southeast particularly southern Mississippi and some into Alabama for those unfamiliar with genesis Gulf coast implants solves their their triassic salt units that have been covered by business like strata, and then they saw arises because it's less dense and penetrates these overlying.
David King: units and Fo brings the salt body, close to the surface and, in some cases at the surface.
David King: it's an interesting story that in southern Mississippi during 1960s.
David King: There were two small yield nuclear weapons over detonated in the Sultan and tighten caddy.
David King: And i'm not saying we should store radioactive material she's there but they're already active materials already in those salt homes and.
David King: That has been contained over the years.
David King: But there would be some have to be some sort of.
David King: exploration the cell phones by drilling to assess their appropriateness i'm in the valley and register or large bodies of shale, this is these so called much one deposits were scaling and it's been strongly compressed and second.
David King: These are possible tyrese one does carry out there from the hospital over pressure conditions as a sales, but they are very thick cheryl departments.
David King: Here in the.
David King: The value range as well, so.
David King: there's.
David King: there's so much wants and then in the plateau to be various Shell formations attempts.
David King: As well they're they're also can be shells, as mentioned in some of those.
David King: pillars again this is again it's that are live below the coastal plain but above the Christian basement.
David King: And those would be things like the Jurassic sedimentary rock some warm as compelling, as I mentioned, these have.
David King: An irregular sort of spotty distribution and their their their exact distribution in nature, would have to be assessed in advance by drilling before it could be sort of disposal activity there.
David King: isn't this before and ron's talk this is just a generic concept of disposing.
David King: In shales that would be more than two kilometers in depth.
David King: And they go to the device selection page on the technology tab you can read.
David King: one or more of their papers on this process and how this works.
David King: Again, this is the the effort report that previews disposal concepts regulations, technology and geological targets and it can be downloaded.
David King: At this link or just go to Africa, calm and you will see.
David King: Having a good third publications.
David King: This is a figure from from that publication showing how, in this in this study policy and regulations.
David King: social domain aspects that you logical aspects and the operational aspects had been reviewed those could eventually be put to the test in a demonstration and then eventually perhaps implemented at some point in the future.
David King: i'm happy to take any questions from.
David King: Those of you who are here this morning I want to thank and southern company and every and auburn for supporting the geological aspects of this work, particularly want to thank Richard Esposito for bringing auburn into this project and so with that i'll.
David King: Go to questions.
Richard Esposito: hey this is Richard, I have one question.
Richard Esposito: So you showed the population map.
Richard Esposito: There, so I mean you know, at first glance, you would think yeah we would likely want to do this in areas that maybe aren't on existing sites for areas that are not heavily populated populated but.
Richard Esposito: You know this this technology seems really safe so would.
Richard Esposito: Is there, like a distance we'd be want to be away from population centers What if we found just excellent geology that was in fairly close proximity to.
Richard Esposito: A population Center you know other than maybe outreach issues or acceptance issues, why wouldn't we want to do it and those locations, I guess that would be the main reason.
David King: Why, I don't think that you and I necessarily have a problem with that, but the.
David King: The previous government reports like freeze.
David King: Study suggests they don't cite a distance, such as say not near urban city.
David King: So yeah I mean if it's if it's suitable I think the public acceptance is good.
David King: As RON pointed out the potential for sure.
rodmccullum: yeah I don't I don't know if i'm still on.
rodmccullum: Your you really could do this anywhere, because you are so deep under the ground, and I think is David has demonstrated there such a high level of protection.
rodmccullum: It really goes into where can you get the kind of agreement that I was talking about when you're running through an adaptive phase process and.
rodmccullum: You know if i'm negotiating with a population of a large city or if i'm negotiating with the population of a rural area might be different.
rodmccullum: But I would also point out that there's a lot of interest right now in something called environmental justice.
rodmccullum: And to say okay well here's a here's a rural area so we'll put it there, away from our wealthy suburbs probably not a good starting point, so I again start with an open solicitation and.
rodmccullum: You know if if if an urban community said, we were interested in need some of these reactors or small reactors.
rodmccullum: That could fit into more urban areas, if you were coupling disposal with the reactor so yeah I would it would be a wider ranging negotiation in a more populated area but I wouldn't take it off the table from step one I would solicit everywhere.
Richard Esposito: yeah I would have to agree with that, because it's interesting if you compare it to the carbon storage history.
Richard Esposito: Of citing you know there's enhanced recovery fields where CO2 is being injected that are right underneath towns, and you know.
Richard Esposito: Cities and things like that not not large cities but rural cities, because that's where a lot of these all come or fields are, but even like what CO2 storage like at the ATM Archer Daniels Midland site up in Illinois.
Richard Esposito: When they're injecting CO2 and there's a school underneath the footprint of the plume and things like that as time goes on, and people get more acceptance to these type of subsurface technologies, they recognize that.
Richard Esposito: You know it's better just to do it and good geology and not worry about you know what's at the surface, because it's not going to make it to the surface.
rodmccullum: that's a good point.
David King: Well, if if a community is is the host to reactor facility to begin with.
David King: And the storage is is presently on site above ground and containers what Why would they be concerned about now putting the underground by you know it's that's where I think the approach to Community and education, and now reached.
David King: Making sure they understand their voices are heard and then you might find more of an enlightened population in an urban area.
David King: So I just mentioned.
David King: Guidelines.
rodmccullum: yeah that's a good reason for sorry for the storage before disposal option, because they already have storage you're giving them storage, that is safer and then it becomes disposal that's exactly the essence of phased and adaptive management.
David King: we're up we're up to the.
David King: Actual in the break time so I mentioned that if anyone had any questions about.
David King: any of the previous three talks, this would be an excellent time to to bring that up.
David King: For those of you.
David King: who are interested in this I would highly recommend.
David King: That every document which you can download.
David King: If you contact any of the three of us who spoke this morning, we can give you the Web link and if you're having difficulty finding.
David King: Anybody have concerns about disposal and maybe.
David King: We have people attending the session, who.
David King: have concerns about this, who would like to express.
David King: Well, both rods, I want to thank you guys, I would, I think i'd be a good thing to do is, if you guys could maybe just hanging around during this.
David King: period and that way if somebody does have a question, they can just unmute or chat you and you guys will be here and then we'll do the handoff to Laura at.
David King: At 925 and she'll take over as as session chair, then enlarges to reassure you i'm not going to go away immediately i'll just make sure everything's working Okay, for you and.
David King: And you can screen share successful and stones so i'm not leaving.
Madeline Konopinski: Alright, so good morning, my name is Madeline kempinski and today i'll be talking to you all about My thesis research on landslides in the southern appalachians.
Madeline Konopinski: So the appalachian mountains are an ancient mountain range that extends roughly 3000 kilometers from Newfoundland to Alabama and they were formed by three meter Roger Nice, the taconic the acadian new acadian and the allegheny.
Madeline Konopinski: And so from this, there are four main physical logical provinces that characterize appalachians and they are the appalachian plateau the valley enrich the blue Ridge, and the Piedmont.
Madeline Konopinski: And for my specific research I focused on the valley and bridge province, which is characterized by sub linear or sub parallel linear valleys and bridges that trend northeast to Southwest.
Madeline Konopinski: The ridges are composed of mainly erosion resistance and stones and court sites, while the valleys are composed of shells and carve dates that are more erosion prone.
Madeline Konopinski: And so, looking at so mass wasting in the appalachians is more common than previously thought, especially within the valley and rich and so looking at this usg usgs.
Madeline Konopinski: susceptibility map, we see that the central and southern appalachians are mainly identified as moderate to some areas with high and low susceptibility, whereas the northern portion is has more of a high susceptibility.
Madeline Konopinski: And so, what are the main controls for mass wasting within the appalachians, and so the main two are the most common are precipitation and earthquakes and.
Madeline Konopinski: So we collected data from the noaa precipitation frequency data server and created this 1000 year 48 hour precipitation event map and so we're seeing is for our more southern portion of appalachians.
Madeline Konopinski: The rainfall intensity ranges anywhere from six to 12 inches of rain, whereas our central in Virginia and West Virginia is anywhere from about four six inches.
Madeline Konopinski: And so we took known landslide data from the NASA landslide catalog and overlaid on top, and we do see that the majority of the landslides are occurring in these higher intensity rainfall areas.
Madeline Konopinski: So, then, we went and we looked at earthquakes and earthquakes are another common trigger for mass wasting events but are less frequent than precipitation induced ones, and they are more difficult to predict.
Madeline Konopinski: Within the valley and rich province, there are two main seismic zones, the East Tennessee seismic solid and the gals county seismic zone.
Madeline Konopinski: And so the Dallas county or the East Tennessee seismic sound isn't interpolate seismic zones located within grenville basement rocks and it runs roughly 350 kilometers from northeastern Alabama to just northeast of knoxville Tennessee.
Madeline Konopinski: And so the zone produces the second most earthquakes within the Eastern us.
Madeline Konopinski: And as you can see here the largest earthquakes producing this region are from irondale Alabama in 1916 with a magnitude of five.
Madeline Konopinski: And Fort Payne Alabama in 2003 with a magnitude of 4.6 and so past research has determined that for.
Madeline Konopinski: A rock block slide to be triggered by earthquakes and needs to have a magnitude of at least five and Recent research has actually shown that appalachian earthquakes in the past, may have actually been about a 6.5 or even greater.
Madeline Konopinski: But what are other controls that may be causing these mass wasting events so recent geological mapping on cold and mountain located in North Eastern Alabama.
Madeline Konopinski: has identified three incredibly large landslides ranging in sizes from four to 24 million cubic million cubic meters of material.
Madeline Konopinski: And so the largest landslide within the appalachians is sinking creek Virginia, which is 100 million cubic meters of material and is located near the Dallas county size are located in the south county size, and so the researchers were questioning what is causing these landslides.
Madeline Konopinski: So they went in and they collected, a joint measurements and the strength of the bridge and what they found was that in areas where the landslides were located.
Madeline Konopinski: The joint orientations and the strength of the rich orientations became sub parallel parallel within about 10 degrees of each other and so from here.
Madeline Konopinski: They began to ask the question of do joint control do joint have some kind of control on landslides just in this area, or is it throughout the value bridge problems, and this is where my thesis research comes into play.
Madeline Konopinski: So we hypothesize that large mass wasting events can be joined controlled and there is seismically triggered mass wasting.
Madeline Konopinski: And answer this question, and these hypotheses a systematic joint survey from Dallas county Virginia to Birmingham Alabama was conducted within the valley and rich.
Madeline Konopinski: And so, data collection began in Giles county due to the size of its own that resides there and it continued throughout the.
Madeline Konopinski: Continued Southwest along the East Tennessee seismic zones to Birmingham Alabama and so three main bridges were followed.
Madeline Konopinski: along this region, just to see if this is again a regional characteristic or if it's just in specific locations and so approximately every 20 miles a day to station was constructed and up to 100 joints were measured.
Madeline Konopinski: Along with the joints the strike of the bridge and the apology was also determined.
Madeline Konopinski: Basic field methods were used to measure the joints and the strikes and after all of the data was collected.
Madeline Konopinski: We use the program stereo net to create these roads diagrams that are popping up along with their data stations and overall about 3000 joint measurements were taken throughout this region and.
Madeline Konopinski: Again created these rows diagrams that we could compare compared to the strength of the Ridge at each one of these stations.
Madeline Konopinski: So the data was then analyzed and Arc map and we created these stress maps, so we created a primary joint stress map and a secondary joint stress map.
Madeline Konopinski: And so we did this basically mainly just to quantify the data but also to see if there is any relationship between the orientations of our primary and secondary joint orientations and some of these basement structures that are in this region and so.
Madeline Konopinski: What we did is we created our stress maps and we overlaid it with these basement faults from this region and what we're seeing is that we're seeing three main.
Madeline Konopinski: basement domains we're seeing this Birmingham domain this chattanooga gadsden domain and then this Eastern Tennessee domain and we're seeing this.
Madeline Konopinski: Almost influence from our basement faults onto the orientation of our joint sets we also looked at some gravity anomaly data to see again if there was any kind of structures in the subsurface that were affecting these joint orientations.
Madeline Konopinski: So from here, we took this are prominent joint set and our secondary joint sets and for each of our stations and our strike for each of each of the stations and found the difference between the two.
Madeline Konopinski: and similar to the cold mountain data if the difference was 10 degrees or less it was labeled as a high susceptibility area if it was between 10 and 20 degrees, it was a moderate susceptibility and anything above 20 was a low susceptibility.
Madeline Konopinski: And so just based on our primary joint failure stability map, we see that six of these stations.
Madeline Konopinski: i'm not including our coven mountain data which I did put in there to see if it would be a high susceptibility area so 60 stations were labeled as high susceptibility for our secondary joint failure we had more labeled as high susceptibility and even more labeled as modern sensibility.
Madeline Konopinski: From here we overlaid the known landslides, on top of our.
Madeline Konopinski: Joint feelers ability maps to see if there was any relationship, along with our seismic zones again to see if there's any relationship between the susceptibilities and.
Madeline Konopinski: Land site locations so for our primary a failure joint failure stability mass we don't.
Madeline Konopinski: really see too much correlation between our landslides and disabilities but for our secondary joint failure we do, especially within our East Tennessee seismic zone six of those stations were labeled as high susceptibility.
Madeline Konopinski: So, then, we went in and for we only did this for our primary joint set due to time constraints, but we went in for all of our high susceptibility.
Madeline Konopinski: areas and we pulled high resolution lidar data from the usgs 3D database and we created these high resolution dms and we went in and tried to see if we could find any.
Madeline Konopinski: landslide characteristics or features and so at station.
Madeline Konopinski: From this from the DM which is figure a we see this almost concave kind of feature and downslope we see this little hill that looks like it could be a slump We then use the curvature tool to again.
Madeline Konopinski: Just kind of clarify what we're seeing and again we're seeing this concave surface with this slump feature right below it.
Madeline Konopinski: There is no geological map that we could find that was for this area, besides the Virginia state map, so we could not identify if this had already been identified as a landslide or not.
Madeline Konopinski: So then, in between station five and 12 which were both high susceptibility areas we found this weird looking feature.
Madeline Konopinski: With this kind of tail looking thing as the DM again we put it, and used our curvature tool and we see where.
Madeline Konopinski: it's a landslide we see that this portion is where broke off it's slumped down and then again we see this another little tail slump on the bottom, so we were able to find a geological map from 1991, and so this region has been.
Madeline Konopinski: mapped with other landslides, on the same dip slope right up here.
Madeline Konopinski: And so, this is where this feature was look or is located and they mapped it as colloquium and so based on the lack of technology in 1991 not having lidar data and all these other technological advances that we have now.
Madeline Konopinski: They may have just mapped it as instead of a landslide and they mapped it a little bit smaller than what the feature really is.
Madeline Konopinski: Furthermore, at station five using the same 1991 map.
Madeline Konopinski: They actually did identify a landslide right here, which is again on that same dip slope of that same bridge as that last land side and from station.
Madeline Konopinski: It is located right above our station five which again was this high susceptibility area.
Madeline Konopinski: So what does this all mean um so the lamp sides that identified right here, and then this land, so the de identified here.
Madeline Konopinski: is on the exact same Ridge, and on the same dip slope as sinking creek mountain these large 100 million cubic meters of material landslides and so kind of from here, the question then becomes is there some kind of joint control.
Madeline Konopinski: That was a factor in the sinking creek mountain landslides and that would definitely be something for future work to be done.
Madeline Konopinski: From this data, we found that the prominent joint set six of the 55 data stations that we had we excluded, two of them, as they were not in the valley and rich they were actually in the blue Ridge.
Madeline Konopinski: Had a high susceptibility and that's 11%, which is a decent amount, and from this, we were able to identify to mass wasting events for our secondary join sent we have eight of the 55 had a high susceptibility with a 14.5% being that high susceptibility mass wasting events were not.
Madeline Konopinski: Looked at or tried to identify due to time constraints, but that's something that future work definitely would be.
Madeline Konopinski: Questions Thank you.
Laura Mulrooney: That was great um yeah if anyone has any questions you can feel free to turn your camera or say them out loud, or you can type them into the chat um.
David King: Large box and these lines lines.
Madeline Konopinski: For the ones that I identified, I was not able to determine that that would definitely have to be a future work kind of thing where it would have to be in go into the field and see if they were rock black slides or not.
David King: So.
David King: So, what was the way you did your work and the way.
David King: To material presented itself in the field, you couldn't do like claims analysis sense.
Madeline Konopinski: Of.
ownership.
Madeline Konopinski: So, with the time constraints, so due to coven I was supposed to start my data collection in the summer and I actually was not able to fully start my data collection until this past December.
Madeline Konopinski: So it didn't really allow for us to do that in depth of analysis and more so the purpose of this was to determine if there was a relationship between.
Madeline Konopinski: These joints and potential landslides stability, but that would definitely be something that future work could be done with or another study could be done.
Rindsberg, Andrew: um I actually mapped call them mountain.
Rindsberg, Andrew: 15 or 20 years ago so it's an incredibly obscure publication, maybe 25 or 50 copies printed of addressing the hopes bluff water supply.
Rindsberg, Andrew: and
Rindsberg, Andrew: David good to see you the there are large blocks, you can actually map out in the Calvin mountain landslide you can actually map out the units in the landslide they came down as as a stack and distorted on the way down, it was very confusing for the first day of mapping.
Rindsberg, Andrew: And I published a letter.
Rindsberg, Andrew: To the editor of geology.
Rindsberg, Andrew: geology or do times, one of those about this and promptly got a letter back from Thornton every who had found it first, so there is actually a history of exploration of this landslide that goes goes way back.
mark carter: I have a question real quick, this is mark Carter very nice talk.
mark carter: very interesting um are you keeping an eye out for any age database material and the toes of your landslides, because at the end of the day, that's how you're going to be able to correlate landslides with.
mark carter: Events in these two seismic zones East Tennessee seismic zone, we have a little bit better of a Paleo seismic history, the Giles county zone at the moment we have nothing.
mark carter: that's probably going to be changing here after the August event those far event last August.
mark carter: we're probably going to be developing something there, but you know, at the end of the day, you're really going to have to get some good age dates on all of these.
mark carter: To be able to specifically tie them back into the Paleo seismic record.
mark carter: Not only also point out that we've mapped these in the blue range as well in Virginia and there's a bunch of them in the blue range that you can see the lidar is spectacular further to the north side also encourage you after you you're done with family and rich work.
mark carter: You can certainly step out into the blue Ridge and start taking a look at some of these as well.
Madeline Konopinski: uh yeah so we did My thesis advisor and I, we did talk about doing some kind of dating and.
Madeline Konopinski: He is going to be doing some rsl dating in this area, but for my actual thesis just because of how large of a region that I was collecting data from and again due to the time constraints, especially because of coven forcing me to.
Madeline Konopinski: go into the field much later than I originally wanted to, and expect it to that wasn't something that was really applicable for me, but I will say the the two data stations that were.
Madeline Konopinski: station 21 I believe in station, those were both in the in the blue Ridge province and both of them had a high susceptibility for their primary and secondary joints so that would also be something to look into for the future.
mark carter: Great Thank you good work very good work.
Madeline Konopinski: Thank you.
Laura Mulrooney: yeah there's one other question in the chat which we can be really quick with it's um, how do you define demarcation between high and medium.
susceptible.
Madeline Konopinski: So again, that was kind of based on the colon mountain data called a mountain research that was done.
Madeline Konopinski: Where we really wanted they constrained how they identified their high to moderate to low susceptibility as that 10 degree mark.
Madeline Konopinski: For because we wanted it for two.
Madeline Konopinski: One is to be sub parallel to parallel, and so we wanted to constrain that degree, so it wasn't such a wide range.
Madeline Konopinski: question.
Laura Mulrooney: yeah I think so um.
Laura Mulrooney: That was that was an excellent presentation I think we're going to move on to our next presenter now.
Laura Mulrooney: which I see.
Bill Jacobs: it's bill Jacobs.
Laura Mulrooney: Yes, yes.
Bill Jacobs: who's video is.
Bill Jacobs: not working.
Bill Jacobs: But.
Bill Jacobs: I hope my screen share will be working.
Bill Jacobs: It won't.
Bill Jacobs: won't kick up.
Bill Jacobs: I was video down earlier, but let me see if the screen share is going to work properly.
Laura Mulrooney: Okay, we can see your screen.
Bill Jacobs: Okay, good, but you can't see me.
Bill Jacobs: Well, well.
Bill Jacobs: I guess, I guess, this will be ready to talk I don't want to take the time to reboot or whatever would be required.
Laura Mulrooney: Good.
Bill Jacobs: So i'm just going to proceed here with the.
Bill Jacobs: There we go Okay, so this is the rather cumbersome title for a.
Bill Jacobs: While it's been a fun research project.
Bill Jacobs: In conducted with two members of the unc a faculty mineralogist Britney mcnamee, who is with us today and we'll be able to respond to questions and structural geologists Jackie main deal.
Bill Jacobs: shining rock is unusual and quite a formation and quite popular hiking destination in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Bill Jacobs: it's located about five miles off the blue Ridge parkway and within a federal will designated wilderness area which, among other things, means that.
Bill Jacobs: We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get in the forest service permit to have some rocks for lab work.
Bill Jacobs: It is located in the eastern subdivision of the blue Ridge geologic province.
Bill Jacobs: The principal rock formation of that area is the ocean sourced Meta sedimentary and highly metamorphic highly head erogenous ash metamorphic sweet.
Bill Jacobs: As you can see, on the left hand map, let me pull up my pointer we can not.
Bill Jacobs: Standing rock you shine down here at the bottom of this shining rock is completely surrounded by the rocks of the ash metamorphic sweet within that area and every place else that we could determine based on what we could not find in the literature this rock is quite unique.
Bill Jacobs: it's not quite totally so we did find one much smaller outcrop about 15 kilometers on regional strike to the Northeast on private land in bunkum county, and that is labeled in our map is at the bump them outcrop.
Bill Jacobs: shiny rock itself is a stretches for about.
Bill Jacobs: 400 meters along a Ridge and across the top of shining mountain it's between 20 and 30 meters in with for most of it.
Bill Jacobs: about double that across the summit in terms of vertical relief above the surrounding landscape.
Bill Jacobs: it's almost a landscape level at the summit, but when you get down to the Southwestern tip which were the local topography is about 200 meters lower than at the summit, you have vertical exposures of 20 to 30 meters.
Bill Jacobs: They have stepped back so it's hard to see them all, at one time or or it can be hard to estimate them but around the areas of high vertical relief.
Bill Jacobs: There are.
Bill Jacobs: distinct and in some places quite dense boulder feels feels of rock that has cleaved off the city information, the reason they have cleaved is if this is a highly fractured formation will look at those fracture planes a little more closely in a few minutes.
Bill Jacobs: This image shows about a 10 meter high wall of the in-situ formation bounded by a what I would characterize as a modest boulder field, the standards in the area, you can see the the highly fractured character.
Bill Jacobs: What you need to understand to appreciate shining rock is that all of the Gray in this image is shadow or like in a little bit of light superficial weathering the native rock is snow white and this, you can see, in in this image here the Gray that's like and.
Bill Jacobs: There is a particularly in these fracture planes.
Bill Jacobs: A at times very intense mineral staining because it's restricted to the fracture planes we think this is not part of the original rock but rather is the product of.
Bill Jacobs: Subsequent intrusion of iron enrich groundwater.
Bill Jacobs: In enriched in iron is the micro rich surrounding rocks whether way.
Bill Jacobs: At.
Bill Jacobs: Hand samples scale, and this is about a six centimeter penknife you can see the intense white character.
Bill Jacobs: This is like in the black material.
Bill Jacobs: To the right there are is an example of the.
Bill Jacobs: quite strong mineral staining both in face on and in cross section and in cross section, you can see how this is typically around have less than half a centimeter.
Bill Jacobs: attracted us to look more closely enchanting rock is how you it contrasts so strongly with the courts that you see when somebody says hey I have of course outcrop here in this part of the country, those courts outcrops it just in invariably in the others, we have all encountered.
Bill Jacobs: Are these clearly intrusive.
Bill Jacobs: veins as an intrusive their crystal sizes.
Bill Jacobs: cool slowly underground, you have a wide range of crystal sizes well up into the multitask centimeter scales there's also fell spark crystals present and the scale is entirely different, this is a energy bar down here help you with that, but you measure the width of these.
Bill Jacobs: The typical courts outcrops in 10s of meters, not the 10s of meters that you see at Shannon wrong also these.
Bill Jacobs: tend to have very crisp borders with the surrounding rock that's a topic we'll come back to later and so based on all of this front, from the outset we.
Bill Jacobs: Were they thought it'd be difficult for this to have been a of igneous origin, the shining law.
Bill Jacobs: But we also thought there was a real look conceptual most issue with shining rockers Meta sedimentary, and that is that it's within a formation, that is highly heterogeneous.
Bill Jacobs: Totally mixed up and around it is very difficult to find even hand sample scale example of pure anything much less a outcrop of pure material, the size of shining rock we thought it was worth looking more deeply.
Bill Jacobs: Looking at the mineralogy we very quickly.
Bill Jacobs: confirmed what you would conclude by looking with a hand lands that this material is.
Bill Jacobs: Court every.
Bill Jacobs: Grain in this photo micro graph of any size is courts there's nothing else there, except in the Inter granular gaps and a few cracks in there, you can find minor quantities of iron calcium magnesium few other things looking more closely at one of those heavily stained areas.
Bill Jacobs: I you find that the staining material is constrained to the to the cracks and interview granular areas i'm struck by how deeply stained.
Bill Jacobs: This material appears based on the small quantity of staining material that it contains and we attribute that to the life that.
Bill Jacobs: reflects off of this training material being in turn reflected about are quite a lot within the the the matrix of pure courts transparent slightly great crystals I should mention, and in that context that the White that you see in this formation is not pigment quite its optical white.
Bill Jacobs: It is created by the.
Bill Jacobs: reflection of all.
Bill Jacobs: wavelengths visible light randomly reflecting about in this matrix of sand sized clear.
Bill Jacobs: quartz crystals.
Bill Jacobs: Now, if you look at it look take eds spectrums of the staining material in the surrounding courts, you get this the staining area staining materials, a heavy in the iron oxide, the adjoining quartz crystal.
Bill Jacobs: comes out as pure almost pure and this was 100% silicon dioxide.
Bill Jacobs: While we were looking at the fence sections we considered what they told us about metamorphic history.
Bill Jacobs: You can find this checkerboard extinction pattern in the courts grains which indicates peak metamorphic conditions and the Selma Selma nights known as.
Bill Jacobs: A parameter civilized fast these which happens to be the same, that was mapped in this immediately surrounding area by Arthur mercial back in his work in around 2009.
Bill Jacobs: Looking at the larger scale structural characteristics.
Bill Jacobs: We took strike measurements of the on those fracture planes we couldn't do fully ation because there is no affiliation there's no foley at mineral in this formation, you can see, there are two very distinct.
Bill Jacobs: sets the, the one that runs to the Northeast with regional stripe has, I mean direction 43 degrees within considered.
Bill Jacobs: The.
Bill Jacobs: strike of affiliation, as measured by mersch at least or at sites within one kilometer the shining rock outcrop if you take out the the orthogonal measurements the the principal the main direction of the roots of all.
Bill Jacobs: derived.
Bill Jacobs: affiliation is 43 degrees, the same we found for those fracture pipelines.
Bill Jacobs: So after we work through all that we really come back to our.
Bill Jacobs: original expectation, and I suppose that this rock.
Bill Jacobs: Is Meta sedimentary in its origin, they said interpretation of course on the Grange size and uniformity which is, these are the same size, point six two maybe one and a half.
Bill Jacobs: centimeters very different from what you find in the in the intrusive veins we also.
Bill Jacobs: Note the inner granular gaps which are consistent with a sedimentary deposition of the original material, but not with a the crystallization of a of an igneous fluid.
Bill Jacobs: We, the structural and metamorphic consistency with the surrounding Meta sedimentary rock so strongly indicates that these rocks have been part of the surrounding ash metamorphic formation, since that.
Bill Jacobs: Before the period of peak metamorphosis which was.
Bill Jacobs: During the order vision and the technical rajini and, finally, the character, the transition to the surrounding rocks we could not find a.
Bill Jacobs: contact, or even a rock that we interpreted as a transitional older in at shining rock but, at the bunkum formation, we could locate good located.
Bill Jacobs: Several boulders 20 to 50 meters from the in situ formation that we interpreted as being transitional and they're trying their character is.
Bill Jacobs: alternating layers of the surrounding mica schist and the courtside this is.
Bill Jacobs: Not.
Laura Mulrooney: What you would expect to.
Bill Jacobs: Find with an intrusive.
Laura Mulrooney: wanted to let you know that you're at your 15 minute mark so.
Laura Mulrooney: Yes, five Min.
Bill Jacobs: i'm getting there.
Bill Jacobs: Thank you.
Bill Jacobs: And, but it is.
Bill Jacobs: We think what you would expect to encounter with as a transition between two adjoining but.
Bill Jacobs: very distinct deposition regimes.
Bill Jacobs: As a Meta sedimentary this necessarily has a proto lift it was highly mature coursera night.
Bill Jacobs: you're in line with the issue of how do you develop that in a formation, that is so head erogenous like the ash getting the raw material together it's probably not that big an issue shallow water marine processes can very efficiently sort sand by size and also remove the residue of.
Bill Jacobs: more rapidly.
Bill Jacobs: weathering materials, the mixers and then salesforce and leave you with.
Bill Jacobs: Pure courts.
Bill Jacobs: To reality check that we looked at sands in the research sands collection maintained it you ncaa and found several instances along the Gulf coast.
Bill Jacobs: were particularly around Destin where the sand was have a purity that could readily 50 honest, the raw material of the proto lift.
Bill Jacobs: The bigger issue, and we think is how do you get that raw material converted into the proto left without contamination.
Bill Jacobs: This rock it's very rare and we think that indicates that you would have to have had a unusual set of circumstances and clearly not only the shoreline configuration and current wave patterns with possibly a rapid rise and sea level accompany my head heavy.
Bill Jacobs: surges pulses of.
Bill Jacobs: sedimentation that were nonetheless gently deposited.
Bill Jacobs: Forming a barrier in tuning this sand and protecting it from contamination during the further burial and eventual lifting vacation after that transport onto the surface metamorphosis and eventual transport into his current location.
Bill Jacobs: So in so we conclude that the shining rock courtside is a distinct minor but distinct subunit of the larger ash metamorphic sweet, and we think that.
Bill Jacobs: While it's quite rare and it's a little bit fun and it's sort of small for regional mapping purposes, that it should be have a mapping designation, that is correlative with other rocks of the ATMs, and for that.
Bill Jacobs: purpose, we have designated in our maps, as the Z a queue.
Bill Jacobs: Or that if if there any questions, Dr mcnamee and I would be happy to try to respond.
Bill Jacobs: Thank you i'll stop sharing see what happens.
Bill Jacobs: And still blank.
Laura Mulrooney: was great um if anyone has any questions they want to go ahead and ask we've got a minute or two for those.
Laura Mulrooney: I can ask question.
Laura Mulrooney: So i'm looking at this unit um.
Laura Mulrooney: You mentioned that it has some it's not uniformly thick um do you think that it's the result of solid state defamation, or do you think that that's the result of the way it was deposited.
Bill Jacobs: I would, I would assume it's it's the way in which deposited on.
Bill Jacobs: This.
Bill Jacobs: earth earth complex desert rarely lands up in a nice.
Bill Jacobs: A nice rectangle.
Bill Jacobs: The.
Bill Jacobs: Agni you have any comment on that.
Brittani McNamee: No, I, I think that um the just the deposition of the deposit falls in line with that.
Laura Mulrooney: Is there any other questions you can type that or you can say them out loud.
Bill Jacobs: If you get in the area it's a it's a day long hike but it's a fascinating location.
Laura Mulrooney: yeah okay i'm at the end if anyone has questions in the next 20 minutes i'm can come back to um but we'll move on Andy I think you're our next presentation.
Andy Bobyarchick: i'm not gonna speak to say my last name.
Laura Mulrooney: I don't want to insult you.
Andy Bobyarchick: it's Bobby archie i've got my students call me Dr B, so you can go with that all right, let me see if I can get my screen sharing working here.
Andy Bobyarchick: Okay.
Laura Mulrooney: you're good, we can see it.
Okay.
Andy Bobyarchick: The just sort of in concert with the theme of this session, the evaluation of potential subsurface disposal.
Andy Bobyarchick: and storage of waste is contingent upon a lot of factors but among them is fracture enhance porosity and permeability and rock masses and a traditional method of estimating.
Andy Bobyarchick: or estimation, is to project fracture mapping it or surface commonly of what we would call a tectonic joints into the subsurface.
Andy Bobyarchick: In this presentation I described fractures that i've mapped in Crystal and rocks in the central North Carolina Piedmont and question how deep all systematic fracture systems.
Andy Bobyarchick: can be projected or not.
Andy Bobyarchick: So the area that i'm going to talk about is indicated by the Red rectangle.
Andy Bobyarchick: In this map, and this is within what we call the Carolina terrain, which is a paragon wanna late produce like the camera and volcanic Arc.
Andy Bobyarchick: East of the gold hill shear zone.
Andy Bobyarchick: These rocks comprise a sequence of sedimentary and volcanic rocks that were metamorphosed in green shows face she's and deformed into a series of tight to overturned south east verging folds during the ordovician cherokee originating.
Andy Bobyarchick: In detail rocks in the study area include the tiller information and overlying sit formation, which are part of the albemarle group in the lower part of the Hillary formation.
Andy Bobyarchick: Is an rj salacious sedimentary sequence with where interpolated feels like power classic layers and the upper part of the Hillary shown in blue on the map is.
Andy Bobyarchick: A very fine grained rial light above that the the lower part of the Cid formation shown in maroon on the map is largely fine grained.
Andy Bobyarchick: Sometimes banded rial light, but it also contains to face your sequences and volcanic branches toward the upper part of the fellows like unit and then above that in pink on the map is the main part of the information which is called by strong question Henderson.
Andy Bobyarchick: metabolic assault, but the green stone is a better descriptive term for term for these rocks because it's actually a mixture of various may pick rock types and also contains fine grain sandstone.
Andy Bobyarchick: For the purposes of my presentation i'm going to refer to all of these igneous rocks as the volcanic rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: So a relief in the mountains, which is where we're located is greater than much of the surrounding Piedmont, because the volcanic rocks resist erosion more than the.
Andy Bobyarchick: lowland sedimentary rock.
Andy Bobyarchick: In in our study area, all of the higher elevations are held up by volcanic rocks the dashed line in this figure.
Andy Bobyarchick: Is the conformal contact between mud stone and the Hillary formation and Rye light in the Hillary formation and you can see large blocks of fine grained rial light with angular shapes.
Andy Bobyarchick: In in the insight you exposures of that volcanic unit.
Andy Bobyarchick: Is i'll illustrate the angularity of residual realized is the consequence of both tectonic fabrics and weathering induce fracturing.
Andy Bobyarchick: The principal planar structures in the sedimentary rock sequence our bedding Axial player cleavage and joints or or systematic fractures.
Andy Bobyarchick: Here betting on which my my knife is laying is gently dipping toward you out of the screen.
Andy Bobyarchick: And cleavage throughout this area is very consistently steeply dipping toward the Northwest and is Axial planar to send genetic folds at multiple scales and this outcrop orange light has separated into.
Andy Bobyarchick: cleavage plates by weathering along that cleavage there's at least one set of systematic fractures mapped as primary joints here in the orange light and these joints are part of a regional Northwest southeast trending fracture system.
Andy Bobyarchick: That shows up into the graphic lineaments very well.
Andy Bobyarchick: there's also at least one secondary joints that possibly conjugate with the first, but these are statistically minor.
Andy Bobyarchick: As we'll see.
Andy Bobyarchick: Also, although some parts of the volcanic sequences are layered vetting or compositional layering doesn't seem to play a strong influence on outcrop morphology.
Andy Bobyarchick: But cleavage does as I will demonstrate soon, this is an insight you highlight outcrop and although fragments have begun to separate upon weathering.
Andy Bobyarchick: it's still more or less intact the elliptical outline in the right photograph is.
Andy Bobyarchick: Is a is a an outcropping of the Hillary formation rial light and notice that the long axis of that he lives is.
Andy Bobyarchick: Parallel to the cleavage trend in these rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: there's one set of planar fractures, that is, parallel to that cleavage trend and another set that is orthogonal to made in the Left photograph notice prismatic spire that's bounded by orthogonal fractures joints, if you will, but the spire when you look at the.
Andy Bobyarchick: surface morphology of it is a very complex surface some of these fractures are curvy planar but it's also common here in larger outcrops to see large flatter fractures that are systematic in this way, as well.
Andy Bobyarchick: On the tops of the upper shoulders of some ridges weathered volcanic exposures exposures form knobs whale backs linear ridges and what we call fins on the left is awry alight Finn who's long axis is oriented along the cleavage trend which is.
Andy Bobyarchick: coming in, out of the screen at you.
Andy Bobyarchick: But they're also are additional planar fractures that sculpt the surface of the outcrop that are not typically parallel to cleavage depths.
Andy Bobyarchick: In cross section this thin is wedge shaped indicating that weathering induced fracturing is not precisely directed by the inherent structural and I soccer be in these rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: The right photograph shows more progressive weathering in the fracture lattice structure of this boulder in the forefront of the image.
Andy Bobyarchick: This rock is desegregating through weathering into prisms and, over time, will thought forms smaller and smaller fragments that will become part of a colonial blanket that covers the the slopes of many of the high ridges in the area.
Andy Bobyarchick: Some residual fins are quite remarkable, this is a an exposure of greenstone in this information it's probably a Meta basalt and.
Andy Bobyarchick: This composite fan has a long horizontal axis in this orientation that is roughly parallel to the cleavage trend, but when you look at the the margins of the fin.
Andy Bobyarchick: You see, that they're practically vertical and so those fracture surfaces, as well as this body centered fracture in the exposure or not precisely following cleavage as one might expect.
Andy Bobyarchick: So let's look at some of the orientation data for these rocks this is, these are all contour judgment nets four Poles two planes.
Andy Bobyarchick: And on the left, I have all bedding which is this is mostly in the sedimentary sequences and you can see it's dispersed roughly along a great circle and that reflects the regional north east, south west trending fold axes that are consistent with this part of the care Carolina terrain.
Andy Bobyarchick: But there is a maximum in Northwest dipping planes that caused this density high here and a weaker one here, and this reflects the fact that most of these folds are.
Andy Bobyarchick: verging toward the southeast and they're overturned too steep and and the cleavage and the rocks is Axial planar to those to those to those folds.
Andy Bobyarchick: Axial planar cleavage, on the other hand, has an incredibly tight orientation focus, as you can see from this plot and then join eats.
Andy Bobyarchick: is a bit of a different story that sort of what we expect for those people who have studied joints we know the scatter quite a bit we do see that there is a strong maximum joint trend Northwest southeast and along practically vertical dips but.
Andy Bobyarchick: There are also quite a few polls that fall in the Northwest and southeast quadrant of of that diagram and I want to explore that a bit more.
Andy Bobyarchick: So let's take those joints and divide them into joints found only in sedimentary rocks and joints found in volcanic rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: We see that in the sedimentary rock there's an A an acceptable agreement and the primary fracture orientation with with the with the total, of course, and that again is that North that very strong Northwest southeast trend fractures.
Andy Bobyarchick: joints in the volcanic rocks is a different story, we see that same maximum but then there is a secondary maximum of planes that strike north east, south west and that are very close to vertical and that's this Green density concentration here in a bit of it flowing over over to here.
Andy Bobyarchick: We see no evidence of those fractures in the sedimentary rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: So if you've been following these diagrams, you will have noticed that the the maximum.
Andy Bobyarchick: orientation for cleavage is close to the secondary maximum in volcanic rock joints that I mentioned just now, but not precisely so so i've transferred the.
Andy Bobyarchick: Maximum eigenvalue or eigenvector orientation for cleavage onto this diagram, and that is to 21 degrees 74 degrees striking depth right hand rule.
Andy Bobyarchick: And the the maximum for the secondary joint set is oh for eight degrees 87 degrees.
Andy Bobyarchick: So there's about a the strikes are the trends of that maximum, and this in the cleavage maximum kind of agree, but the defining goals are quite different as well.
Andy Bobyarchick: So.
Andy Bobyarchick: My impression is that this is a a true difference in in structures.
Andy Bobyarchick: We also see these differences in trim surfaces what you're looking at here is sort of the equivalent of those Schmidt net plots this is, these are dip vectors the Gray arrows are.
Andy Bobyarchick: individually measured up vectors on fracture planes and then the sub divided the field area into 10 by 10 subdomains and the red arrows that you see on these maps are sub domain maxima.
Andy Bobyarchick: and
Andy Bobyarchick: These, by the way, are not not horizontal projections of the directed vectors these are therefore just trend lines, but you see visually that when we break this apart into the joints and sedimentary rock sand joints and volcanic rocks that there is.
Andy Bobyarchick: There are a lot more fractures in the volcanic rocks that are directed of dipping rather either Northwest or se from that north east, south west trend that I was talking about.
Andy Bobyarchick: What, then, explains the secondary joiner fracture set in volcanic rocks that does not appear in sedimentary rocks.
Andy Bobyarchick: you're looking at a greenstone Finn here in this information and you're looking along the strike of cleavage and that the maximum horizontal axis of the end is parallel to that trend.
Andy Bobyarchick: However, the when when you when you go on to this outcrop which is inside you and measure planar fractures those fractures do not precisely follow the trend of cleavage again, as one might expect.
Andy Bobyarchick: This fan, like the one I displayed previously and Rye life has an extensive body centered crack.
Andy Bobyarchick: right here, and my impression is that crack formed all at one time so that must have been an interesting event.
Andy Bobyarchick: At the scale of the thin the cracks on dilatory, but if you walk up to a small exposure of that fracture surface one would typically map that as a joint and mostly like most areas in the Piedmont our exposures are very small, and so you end up mapping these as potential systematic fractures.
Andy Bobyarchick: it's characteristic of all the volcanic rocks that they were there mechanically by crack flaking which i'm demonstrating here, where a fragment of the of the host rock has broken away from from from the host form day, despite all in three dimensions, I disagree it'll.
Andy Bobyarchick: crack flake and leaving behind a concave inward marginal divot in the surface of the thin and that's a progressive process, we see at multiple scales and these rocks that they are weathering by fracturing fracturing along or cracking along roughly parallel fracture surfaces.
Andy Bobyarchick: sort of overtime producing a scallop pattern on the surface of some of the residual boulders and outcrops.
Andy Bobyarchick: it's likely that this kind of cracking is only partly guy guided by the cleavage and I saw entropy in these rocks and that.
Andy Bobyarchick: Other processes are involved in the formation of these cracks and fractures such as tense i'll stresses from elastic stream release and possibly installation and other weathering phenomena.
Andy Bobyarchick: look a little bit closer at some of these fracture surfaces pardon.
Laura Mulrooney: Get the 15 minute mark just wanted to let you know.
Andy Bobyarchick: Okay, thank you.
Andy Bobyarchick: will look a little bit closer at these.
Andy Bobyarchick: These these cracks surfaces in an exposure of Hillary tiller rewrite and on the Left you're looking at a still inside you practice lake attached to its host rock by concave inward surface here, and one on one here.
Andy Bobyarchick: And also, if you look closely at this surface you'll see a number of other debits these are crack flake scars.
Andy Bobyarchick: That one that one just about every planar surface you see here is where a shard of the Rock has broken away from from a toast and where those debits intersect you have a sharp Ridge left behind.
Andy Bobyarchick: On the right photograph is a is a close up of one of the cracks surfaces, and if you know about joint joint ornamentation you'll see a large number of features that are characteristic mode one cracks.
Andy Bobyarchick: Opening cracks in other words in in rock fracturing such as Pluto structures arrest lines, and you can see, also if you follow the Pluto structure the Origination point for this fracture.
Andy Bobyarchick: took off from this pirate crystal here, which is, which is not an uncommon thing.
Andy Bobyarchick: So tectonic joints persist across all apologies in this study area some fracture groups and volcanic rocks are not in sedimentary rocks generally right is characterized.
Andy Bobyarchick: By sunken quarter fracture anyway and lower tensile strength and secondary fractures that i'm calling joints and these volcanic rocks are features of mechanical weathering.
Andy Bobyarchick: Guided initially and partly by structural fabrics mainly cleavage then with increasing exhumation cracking processes are dominated more by free surface forces than inherent structure.
Andy Bobyarchick: I like to point out also that this fracture lattice feature that i've shown you in rock outcrops.
Andy Bobyarchick: is also found in satellite, this is a soft rock separate light in a very well developed soil horizon, on top of under these fractured lattice.
Andy Bobyarchick: Right exposures the light materials that you see are mostly clay probably kaolin and possibly calcite and silica.
Andy Bobyarchick: That has infiltrated into the cracks in these rocks, and so what you're looking at here terms of fracture mechanics must be features that formed right at earth's surface and then we're.
Andy Bobyarchick: And then we're either buried by collegial materials or deeply influenced by soil formation so Finally I would just say that.
Andy Bobyarchick: The in terms of estimating the rock mass quantities of potential disposal sites, at least those in the critical zone i'm not sure how much deeper, we could extend these concepts.
Andy Bobyarchick: must take into account that some fracture and, by the way, that would influence seismic kindness right satrapy and borehole quantification as well.
Andy Bobyarchick: We ought to take into account that at least in some kinds of rocks fracture systems aren't necessarily related to regional stress and therefore tectonic joints but have other sources in weathering processes, thank you.
Laura Mulrooney: that's great does anybody have any questions they want to ask you can either type them in the chat or you can ask them out loud or from your cameras on and ask them.
Andy Bobyarchick: Like everybody who's gone to lunch.
Laura Mulrooney: i'll ask a quick question then um so I know that most of these form at the surface and you can tell that for reasons are there ways that you can differentiate between ones that may have formed, since these are they're pretty old rocks that were created.
Laura Mulrooney: If there were older joints that form can you like figure out an age for that.
Andy Bobyarchick: um that's a good question and something I didn't include in here because there's another little side story to this whole thing, and that is there are some exposures in these right lights that look a heck of a lot like colander joining.
Andy Bobyarchick: and
Andy Bobyarchick: And so the park partial answer to your question is yes, maybe dating all of these fractures we know some of them happened, like last night the.
Andy Bobyarchick: fracture surface I showed you with blue most features had very few like and on it, you probably noticed and, and that means that's a pretty pretty darn fresh fracture how far back in time these things go I don't know we were that that's another step in the future.
Laura Mulrooney: yeah Thank you that helps.
Laura Mulrooney: anybody else have a question they want to ask.
Laura Mulrooney: If not, that is the end of our talk for today.
Laura Mulrooney: I hope that you all enjoyed it if you have any questions about any of the other presentations if i'm if the presenters have stuck around feel free to ask those two.
Laura Mulrooney: yeah I was those were all great presentations I we all enjoyed it.
Andy Bobyarchick: So how do you say my name or.
Laura Mulrooney: call you Dr be.
Andy Bobyarchick: Like okay that's good when I see you on the street, you can call me Dr B.
Laura Mulrooney: sounds good.
Andy Bobyarchick: bye.
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