CASCADER: An m-chain gas-phase radionuclide transport and fate model. Volume 1, Basic physics and mathematics

摘要

Chemicals and radionuclides move either in the gas-phase, liquid-phase, or both phases in soils. They may be acted upon by either biological or abiotic processes as they are advected and/or dispersed. Furthermore, parent and daughter radionuclides may decay as they are transported in the soil. CASCADER is a gas-phase, one space dimensional transport and fate model for an m-chain of radionuclides in very dry soil. This model contains barometric pressure-induced advection and diffusion together with linear irreversible and linear reversible sorption for each radionuclide. The advocation velocity is derived from an embedded air-pumping submodel. The airpumping submodel is based on an assumption of isothermal conditions and is barometric pressure driven. CASCADER allows the concentration of source radionuclides to decay via the classical Bateman chain of simple, first-order kinetic processes. The transported radionuclides also decay via first-order processes while in the soil. A mass conserving, flux-type inlet and exit set of boundary conditions is used. The user must supply the initial distribution for the parent radionuclide in the soil. The initial daughter distribution is found using equilibrium rules. The model is user friendly as it uses a prompt-driven, free-form input. The code is ANSI standard Fortran 77.