Subrosion in and About the Four-Township Study Area Near Carlsbad, New Mexico

摘要

This paper concerns one aspect of the feasibility of storing radioactive wastes in bedded salt of the Salado formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The paper is only an appraisal of information at hand. The one aspect here considered is the vulnerability of the candidate area and storage horizon to dissolution and removal of common salt and other evaporites by circulating ground water, also to other agents by which thickness, composition, texture, and structure of rock units may be modified in place. Principal among these other agents are: (1) subsidence or collapse of strata overlying a zone of dissolution; (2) volume expansion of anhydrite as it converts to gypsum in the presence of water, such expansion commonly shattering the texture of enclosing strata that are lightly loaded or merely inflating those strata if they are heavily loaded; (3) plastic flow of common salt under unequal load, tending to close voids created by dissolution; and (4) up-doming of strata as underlying anhydrite-bearing beds inflate or as salt flows. (ERA citation 03:002660)