Hydrogeology of the West Siberian Basin

Nuclear fuel cycle activities of the former Soviet Union (FSU) have resulted in significant contamination of the environment in western Siberia. The radioactive releases to surface waters and the surficial environment from the Mayak site are the largest known in the world. However, they are dwarfed by the amounts of liquid wastes injected into the subsurface at Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk since the early 1960s. This paper provides the status of efforts by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to quantify the regional hydrogeologic context for potential contaminant migration from areas in western Siberia. The West Siberian Basin is the largest platformal basin and region of low relief on earth. Ground water in the West Siberian Basin is contained in a single geologic structure (i.e., a single basin). Hydrogeologic cross sections indicate that freshwater wedges are present in both unconfined and confined aquifers (as well as in Paleozoic rocks) in the highland regions that rim the basin. The authors developed a 13-layer, finite-element computer model of the West Siberian Basin primarily based on GIS integration of data from geologic studies. The top of the hydrologic system was assumed to coincide with a water table derived from smoothed topography and surface-water occurrences; precipitation suppliedmore » the water, and the topographic gradient of the water table supplied the driving force for ground-water flow. The general directions of calculated ground-water flow suggest that (1) the major rivers act as discharge areas, with upwelling below the rivers extending down into the basement rocks; and (2) ground-water divides that penetrate the entire thickness of the model are evident between the major rivers. Their results suggest that contaminants entering the confined aquifer system may eventually migrate to the surface, discharging within major rivers, rather than remaining confined for long travel distances within the basin sediments.« less