A modelling framework to analyze climate change effects on radionuclide aquifer contamination

Non-stationarity of climatic variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation) due to Climate Change (CC) can affect the migration processes of radionuclides released from nuclear activities. In this paper, a framework of analysis is developed to predict the evolution in time of contaminant concentration and fluence under different Climatic Boundary Conditions (CBCs) of precipitation scenarios provided by a climate model integrated with an accurate physical coupled hydraulic-transport model. A case study is worked out with respect to the migration of a radioactive contaminant (²³²Th) at Kirtland Air Force Base (Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA), for which the different CBCs considered are: i) stationary and ii) non-stationary precipitation. The effects of such alternative hypotheses on the physical modelling results are analysed, using a cross-wavelet analysis. It is shown that fluence is strongly affected by precipitation extremes, more than concentration, and it is claimed that a daily scale on the information and data of CBCs is necessary to model, with sufficient accuracy, the migration process and properly assess the impact of future CC on groundwater contamination.