Technical Papers x

David L. Pentz, Ralph H. Stoll, John T. Greeves, Predicus LLC
Ian Miller, GoldSim Technology Group
W. Mark Nutt, Argonne National Laboratory

The PRISM (Prioritization Risk Integration Simulation Model) a computer model was developed to support the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) in its mission to clean up the environmental legacy from the Nation’s nuclear weapons materials production complex. PRISM provides a comprehensive, fully integrated planning tool that can tie together DOE-EM’s projects. It is designed to help DOE managers develop sound, risk-informed business practices and defend program decisions. It provides a better ability to understand and manage programmatic risks.

WM2012 Conference, February 26 - March 1,2012

John T. Greeves and Ralph Stoll, Predicus LLC
John Tauxe, Neptune and Company

Government and commercial nuclear projects have been criticized for the lack of a formal risk-based decision support tool for use in properly prioritizing large projects with significant uncertainties. Predicus LLC collaborated with the GoldSim Technology Group LLC to develop this state-of-the-art process to address this need for both government and commercial clients. Predicus LLC was supported by Neptune and Company to develop the specific example shown in this paper.

WM2010 Conference, March 7-11,2010

David Urquhart and Debbie Richards, Macquarie University

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) addresses issues such as staff costs, performance and turnover – all of which have a basis in uncertainty. In this paper we employ GoldSim Monte Carlo simulated real options to determine the value of HRM policies.

Proceedings of the SimTecT 2008 Simulation Conference and Exhibition

Dan Andersen, CH2M Hill

As population growth increases, additional demands are placed on existing highway systems. Reconfiguring intersections and roadways to limit the number of access points to a particular roadway reduces congestion and has been shown to increase safety.   This paper describes a GoldSim model that was created to try and quantify the environmental benefits (due to reduced emissions) and the economic impacts on businesses in areas where access management techniques were applied.

Link to Paper

Peter Trkman and Aleš Groznik, University of Ljubljana

This article describes how the effectiveness of supply chain modeling can be improved by including multiple tiers in the supply chain using a gasoline distribution example.

This paper develops a dynamic model of retirement withdrawal planning that allows retirees and financial planners to improve the probability of retirement portfolio success while simultaneously increasing the average withdrawal rate. The key elements of the model are periodic adjustments of retirement withdrawal rates based on both portfolio performance and remaining life expectancy, and Monte Carlo simulation of both investment returns and mortality. The inclusion of mortality in fixed planning horizon models reduces the probability of retirement-portfolio ruin by almost 50%. When compared to fixed withdrawal rate models, dynamic withdrawal management incorporating mortality reduces the probability of ruin by another 35–40% while increasing average lifetime withdrawal rates by nearly 50%.

Brent Usher, Roald Strand, Chris Strachotta and Jim Jackson

Prediction of water quality across different components of a mine site is often a challenging proposition, due to both the technical challenges of water quality modelling and the variability of available data. A methodology of integrating site-specific mine waste characterization results and minewater balances through the use of fundamental considerations and empirically-derived constraints to predict water quality from mine waste sources has been developed. The adoption of GoldSim as visual interface software with capacity for matrix calculations has facilitated the development of linked water quality sub-models for different mine facilities. Fundamental and observed geochemical responses from on-site monitoring, field kinetic tests and laboratory data have been incorporated with Phreeqc and geochemists Workbench modelling to identify the most important geochemical processes across the mine site. Based on the static geochemical data to populate the models, the determined geochemical generation rates, the site specific geochemical properties and the mine-site water balance, the GoldSim platform has been used to realise the conceptual understanding of each aspect and construct a framework to provide mine scale water quality projections. In this way, models have been built to assist in a range of situations from a large operating poly-metallic open cut mine to assess mine waste and mine water management alternatives to determination of likely water quality at a proposed large mine in a tropical environment.

IMWA 2010, "Mine Water and Innovative Thinking", Wolkersdorfer. Ch. and Freund, A., p 313-316, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada

R. Kahnt and T. Metschies

Uranium mining and milling continuing from the early 1960’s until 1990 close to the town of Seelingstädt in Eastern Germany resulted in 4 large tailings impoundments . Leakage from these tailings impoundments enters the underlying aquifers and is discharged into surface water streams. High concentration of salts, uranium and several heavy metals are released from the tailings. A compartment model representing the tailings impoundments and the surrounding aquifers for the calculation of contaminant release and transport was set up using GoldSim. This compartment model describes the time dependent hydraulic conditions within the tailings and the surrounding aquifers taking into account hydraulic and geotechnical processes influencing the hydraulic properties of the tailings material. A simple geochemical approach taking into account sorption processes as well as retardation by applying a kd-approach was also implemented . The model was used to predict the effect of various remediation scenarios in a fast and traceable way.

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management (ICEM), September 2007

Przemek Nalecki and Mike Gowan, Golder Associates

This paper presents a holistic approach to mine water management. The proposed approach provides a framework and methodology for integrating different components of mine water infrastructure by explicitly representing the relationships, feedback mechanisms and uncertainties about the conditions and processes involved, using a dynamic, probabilistic simulation method.

IMWA – International Mine Water Congress 2008

Tobias Puhlmann, Juliana Esper, and Rodrigo Dutra Amaral, Kinross Gold Corporation
Charles Voss, Golder Associates

This paper describes a site wide water model of the Rio Paracatu Mineração that was developed to a) evaluate ways to optimize the operation of the existing water management system and b) evaluate alternative water infrastructure and water supply options that would meet the requirements of future mine expansions.

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Acid Rock Drainage (ICARD), March 26-30, 2006, St. Louis, MO

Charlie Voss, Golder Associates
Henri Letient, Compania Minera Antamina S.A.

This article describes the GoldSim model of the Antamina mine that was created to allow different water management strategies to be evaluated to ensure that they would meet regulatory constraints.

Southwest Hydrology, July/August 2006

This presentation describes the use of decision-support models for evaluating closure alternatives for pit lakes.

Presentation at Tailings and Mine Waste '08, October 19-22, 2008, Vail, CO

This presentation describes a site-wide water balance model for the Pierina Gold Mine in Peru that was designed to ensure compliance with environmental regulations.

Link to Presentation

This paper describes a model built to evaluate closure options for a coal mine, taking into account possible water quality issues.

Proceedings of the 9th International Mine Water Conference, Oviedo, Spain, 2005

Describes the evaluation of mine closure plans, including a discussion of the use of GoldSim for the simulation of post-closure water quality.

Link to Presentation

This paper describes a GoldSim model that was developed to simulate the effectiveness and costs of a number of conceptual remedial measures aimed at reducing acidity and metal concentrations in the Ngakawau River and its tributaries near the Stockton Coal Mine, situated on the West Coast of New Zealand.

Proceedings of the 2006 Water in Mining Conference

This paper describes a project which used GoldSim to evaluate infrastructure improvements for a water supply in Queensland, Australia.

Proceedings of the 2006 Water in Mining Conference

Regional water supply models were developed using GoldSim to predict the impacts to water supply systems in Seattle, Everett, Tacoma, and Bellevue, Washington. This research explored the ability of regional water supply systems to meet future water demands given rising populations and climate change. Three sets of climate impacted streamflows were created for future years 2025, 2050, and 2075 using three General Circulation Models and two emission scenarios. The performance of each water supply system was characterized by firm yield and reliability metrics.

Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 2010

GoldSim was used to build 3 water resources models to see how different systems in the Puget Sound area might perform under various climate change scenarios over the next century. Changes in future water demands were also considered. Streamflow was simulated using the distributed hydrology-soil-vegetation model, driven by downscaled ensembles of climate simulations archived from the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. These streamflows were used as input to the water resources models. The models predicted that the water systems should remain reliable under changing climate conditions but if demand increases then the reliability significantly declines.

EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, Climate Change. 2010.

This paper discusses the use of GoldSim to determine the impacts of effluent discharge from treatment plants on receptors in the environment.

Proceedings of the SETAC 22nd Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, 2001

This paper describes a project which used GoldSim to evaluate infrastructure improvements for a water supply in Queensland, Australia.

Proceedings of the 2006 Water in Mining Conference

This paper describes how dynamic simulation models can be used to make water use planning more quantitative.

Proceedings of the 2005 Georgia Water Resources Conference, Athens, GA, 2005

This webpage describes a Neptune and Company project to develop a GoldSim model in support of an Environmental Impact Statement for a license application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The page includes background on the project, along with links to the model file itself.

Link to Website

This paper discusses a GoldSim reservoir operations model that was developed for a public utility district in Washington, USA. This link takes you to the abstract and lets you download the full paper.

J. Water Resour. Plng. and Mgmt. Volume 137, Issue 1, pp. 72-82 (January/February 2011)

This paper describes the application of simulation-based risk assessment to the analysis of abort during the ascent phase of a space exploration mission.

This paper describes the use of GoldSim and other risk analysis tools to model pathogen transmission in food handling. These models were used to explore the effectiveness of different food safety measures.

Food Service Technology Volume 4 Issue 1, (2004), 31 - 49

This webpage describes a Neptune and Company project to develop a GoldSim model to assist in evaluating different options for maintaining power lines running through a contaminated area of the Nevada Test Site.

Link to Website

This is a case study that describes the mathematical equations that can be used to model the intake of pollutants by animals from their environment, and also describes a number of example simulations which illustrate the use of those equations.

Link to Case Study

This thesis describes the use of GoldSim to evaluate different material choices for road-building projects.

Link to Thesis Abstract

This page describes the use of GoldSim to perform risk assessment and remediation planning for a fuel leak in a tank farm.

Link to Project Summary

This website includes links to a presentation describing the use of GoldSim for climate models and also includes a number of example GoldSim Player models.

Link to Website

This paper describes a GoldSim model developed to assist in characterizing, monitoring and possible remediation activities for an ecosystem contaminated by outfalls from high explosive production sites at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Proceedings of the American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002

This article describes the process of volcanological risk assessment, including describing how this is modeled, using GoldSim, within the Yucca Mountain Total System Performance Assessment.

Los Alamos Science, Number 29 (2005), 56-69

This article describes the effort by GoldSim and NASA to develop dynamic reliability analysis software for use in spaceflight mission planning.

NASA Spinoff 2006

This report describes the development of several stochastic and deterministic models to evaluate the risk of introduction and spread of the cocoa frosty pod, from Peru to Brazil."

Morris, E. E. and Nutt, W. M., Argonne National Laboratory

While the traditional approach to reactor safety analyses remain deterministic, this paper considers a stochastic approach for explicitly including uncertainty in safety parameters by applying Monte Carlo sampling coupled with established deterministic reactor safety analysis tools.

International Conference on Fast Reactors and Related Fuel Cycles (FR 2009); Kyoto, Japan; Dec. 7, 2009 - Dec. 11, 2009

Philip Stauffer, Hari Viswanathan, Rajesh Pawar and George Guthrie, Los Alamos National Laboratory

This article describes the CO2−PENS model developed to simulate capture, transport and injection in different geological reservoirs.

Article in Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 43, Number 3 (2009), 565-570
Poster from the 2007 GoldSim User Conference

The article describes a model of CO2 sequestration with enhanced gas recovery for a proposed facility in the Rio Vista region of California.

Proceedings of the TOUGH Symposium 2006

This article (in German) explores the carbon neutrality of using biomass to produce fuels.

Horizonte, 31/ Dezember 2007

Energy intensive activities such as drying are in the focus of attention of CO2 reduction schemes. Origin and quality of the energy used are key issues for the development of the atmospheric CO2 content. Biomass as energy source is discussed as a possibility to reduce atmospheric CO2. However, the line of logic comes from simple static balances. Yet, CO2 is part of the Global Carbon Cycle which is a large, global, dynamic network. This paper presents a simple but globally accurate dynamic model of this cycle and develops scenarios to look at the biomass arguments from a dynamic point of view.

17th International Drying Symposium (IDS 2010) Magdeburg, Germany, 3-6 October 2010

This paper describes a model built to evaluate management plans for coal combustion process in light of market conditions and pending EPA regulations.

Proceedings of the 2003 International Ash Utilization Symposium

A reliability and availability model has been developed for a portion of the 4.6 megawatt (MWdc) photovoltaic system operated by Tucson Electric Power (TEP) at Springerville, Arizona using a commercially available software tool, GoldSim™. This reliability model has been populated with life distributions and repair distributions derived from data accumulated during five years of operation of this system. This reliability and availability model was incorporated into another model that simulated daily and seasonal solar irradiance and photovoltaic module performance. The resulting combined model allows prediction of kilowatt hour (kWh) energy output of the system based on availability of components of the system, solar irradiance, and module and inverter performance. This model was then used to study the sensitivity of energy output as a function of photovoltaic (PV) module degradation at different rates and the effect of location (solar irradiance). Plots of cumulative energy output versus time for a 30 year period are provided for each of these cases.

25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, September 2010, Valencia, Spain

A program is underway at Sandia National Laboratories to predict long-term reliability of photovoltaic (PV) systems. The vehicle for the reliability predictions is a system performance model, currently being run under a simulation software called GoldSim™. The model includes inputs for module performance, irradiance, and degradation. In order to be truly predictive, physics-informed degradation processes and failure mechanisms need to be included in the model. This paper describes accelerated life testing of metal foil tapes used in thin-film PV modules, and how tape joint degradation, a possible failure mode, can be incorporated into the model.

25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, September 2010, Valencia, Spain

The primary aim of this report was to summarize and analyse existing knowledge on processes that could influence the performance of an EBS and hence the long-term safety performance of a repository. After reviewing the safety functions attributed to various barrier components by radioactive waste management programmes across the world, and identifying groups of features, events and processes (FEPs) that describe these safety functions and threats to these safety functions, calculations using GoldSim were carried out to explore the significance of each of these FEPs as controls on the performance of barrier components.

Environment Agency Report SC060055 (September 2010)

This article describes a GoldSim model of a hypothetical high level waste repository in South Korea, and describes the model's response to three hypothetical situations (groundwater intrusion, earthquake and accidental human intrusion).

Progress in Nuclear Energy Volume 51, Issues 6-7, August-September 2009, Pages 746-759

This paper discusses use of GoldSim to evaluate the potential radionuclide release from a repository based on the Advanced Korean Reference Disposal System (A-KRS). Among other advantages, the development of the A-KRS promises a significant reduction of the repository area due to the removal of decay heat from a certain number of fission products such as Sr-90 and Cs-137.

Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Vol. 42, No. 1, February 2010

This paper discusses a GoldSim model built by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to assess the potential impacts of disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium in a near-surface disposal facility.

Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XXXII, MRS Proceedings, Volume 1124, Fall 2008

This report describes the use of GoldSim to model the near-field radionuclide transport processes in a KBS-3V type of nuclear waste repository in Finland.

Posiva Working Report 2010-14, Posiva Oy, Finland (March 2010)

This paper describes an integrated model developed by the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to simulate options for managing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in South Korea.

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Environmental Remediation And Radioactive Waste Management ICEM 2009

This webpage describes a Neptune and Company project to evaluate remediation options for the West Beach Landfill on the grounds of the former Naval Air Station Alameda.

The page includes background on the project, and a link to a more detailed report on the model.

Link to Website

This presentation describes the process of developing acceptance criteria for monolithic wastes.

Link to Presentation

This presentation describes work to quantify the performance of a storage option for containing sulfate-bearing wastes.

Link to Presentation from the 2006 Cementitious Materials for Waste Treatment, Disposal, Remidiation and Decommissioning Workshop

This Wired Magazine article provides a general overview of the Yucca Mountain project including a discussion of how GoldSim is used to try quantify the performance of the repository into the distant future.

Wired Magazine 11.04

This paper discusses a performance assessment model of closure of a radioactive waste tank developed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, using GoldSim, to independently verify results from a Department of Energy assessment of the same project.

Proceedings of the 2002 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting

This paper discusses the performance assessment of a low- and intermediate-level waste repository in the Slovak Republic.

Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 9, 05821 (2007)

This webpage describes a Neptune and Company project to model the performance of borehole-type disposal of low-level nuclear waste at the Nevada Test Site. The page includes background on the project and a general discussion of the model design and structure.

Link to Website

This paper describes performance assessment activity for low-level waste facilities at the Nevada Test Site.

Proceedings of the 2003 Waste Management Symposium

This paper and website describes a project to build a GoldSim model for a hypothetical high-level waste repository in Japan.

Proceedings of the NUCEF2005 Symposium

This paper and website describe a generic performance assessment model developed in GoldSim for low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities.

Link to Website

This paper describes GoldSim modeling techniques for several different processes that occur in a deep geologic repository for the storage of nuclear waste.

Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, Volume 56 (2006), D623-D628