Uranium-rich opal from the Nopal I uranium deposit, Peña Blanca, Mexico: Evidence for the uptake and retardation of radionuclides

The Nopal I uranium deposit of the Sierra Peña Blanca, Mexico, has been the focus of numerous studies because of its economic importance and its use as a natural analog for nuclear-waste disposal in volcanic tuff. Secondary uranyl minerals such as uranophane, Ca[(UO₂)(SiO₃OH)]₂(H₂O)₅, and weeksite, (K,Na)₂[(UO₂)₂(Si₅O₁₃)](H₂O)₃, occur in the vadose zone of the deposit and are overgrown by silica glaze. These glazes consist mainly of opal A, which contains small particles of uraninite, UO₂, and weeksite. Close to a fault between brecciated volcanic rocks and welded tuff, a greenish silica glaze coats the altered breccia. Yellow silica glazes from the center of the breccia pipe and from the high-grade pile coat uranyl-silicates, predominantly uranophane and weeksite. All silica glazes are strongly zoned with respect to U and Ca, and the distribution of these elements indicates curved features and spherical particles inside the coatings. The concentrations of U and Ca correlate in the different zones and both elements inversely correlate with the concentration of Si. Zones within the silica glazes contain U and Ca in a 1:1 ratio with maximum concentrations of 0.08 and 0.15 at.% for the greenish and yellow glazes, respectively, suggesting trapping of either Ca₁U₁-aqueous species or -particles in the colloidal silica. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transform infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR), and oxygen-isotope ratios measured by secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) indicate higher U⁶⁺/U⁴⁺ ratios, higher proportions of Si-OH groups and lower δ¹⁸O values for the greenish silica glaze than for the yellow silica glaze. These differences in composition reflect increasing brecciation, porosity, and permeability from the center of the breccia pipe (yellow silica glaze) toward the fault (green silica glaze), where the seepage of meteoric water and Eh are higher.     

Current and turbulence measurements at the FINO1 offshore wind energy site: analysis using 5-beam ADCPs

We report concurrent measurements of ocean currents and turbulence at two sites in the North Sea, one site at upwind of the FINO1 platform and the other 200-m downwind of the Alpha Ventus wind farm. At each site, mean currents, Reynolds stresses, turbulence intensity and production of turbulent kinetic energy are obtained from two bottom-mounted 5-beam Nortek Signature1000s, high-frequency Doppler current profiler, at a water depth of approximately 30 m. Measurements from the two sites are compared to statistically identify the effects of wind farm and waves on ocean current variability and the turbulent structure in the water column. Profiles of Reynolds stresses are found to be sensible to both environmental forcing and the wind farm wake-induced distortions in both boundary layers near the surface and the seabed. Production of turbulent kinetic energy and turbulence intensity exhibit approximately similar, but less pronounced, patterns in the presence of farm wake effects.     

Implementation of viscoelastic mud-induced energy attenuation in the third-generation wave model,SWAN

The interaction of waves with fluid mud can dissipate the wave energy significantly over few wavelengths. In this study, the third-generation wave model, SWAN, was advanced to include attenuation of wave energy due to interaction with a viscoelastic fluid mud layer. The performances of implemented viscoelastic models were verified against an analytical solution and viscous formulations for simple one-dimensional propagation cases. Stationary and non-stationary test cases in the Surinam coast and the Atchafalaya Shelf showed that the inclusion of the mud-wave interaction term in the third-generation wave model enhances the model performance in real applications. A high value of mud viscosity (of the order of 0.1 m²/s) was required in both field cases to remedy model overestimation at high frequency ranges of the wave spectrum. The use of frequency-dependent mud viscosity value improved the performance of model, especially in the frequency range of 0.2–0.35 Hz in the wave spectrum. In addition, the mud-wave interaction might affect the high frequency part of the spectrum, and this part of the wave spectrum is also affected by energy transfer from wind to waves, even for the fetch lengths of the order of 10 km. It is shown that exclusion of the wind input term in such cases might result in different values for parameters of mud layer when inverse modeling procedure was employed. Unlike viscous models for wave-mud interaction, the inverse modeling results to a set of mud parameters with the same performance when the viscoelastic model is used. It provides an opportunity to select realistic mud parameters which are in more agreement with in situ measurements.     

Modeling of Recent Seismicity,Seismic Hazard and Seismotectonic Setting at the New Administrative Capital City Area,Egypt

Geotectonics - The new administrative capital city area in Egypt, planned to be constructed in the area between Cairo and Suez cities, is vulnerable to moderate and strong earthquakes, which are...     

Comparison of Satellite Altimetric Gravity and Global Geopotential Models with Shipborne Gravity in the Red Sea

The determination of high-resolution geoid for marine regions requires the integration of gravity data provided by different sources, e.g. global geopotential models, satellite altimetry, and shipborne gravimetric observations. Shipborne gravity data, acquired over a long time, comprises the short-wavelengths gravitation signal. This paper aims to produce a consistent gravity field over the Red Sea region to be used for geoid modelling. Both, the leave-one-out cross-validation and Kriging prediction techniques were chosen to ensure that the observed shipborne gravity data are consistent as well as free of gross-errors. A confidence level equivalent to 95.4% was decided to filter the observed shipborne data, while the cross-validation algorithm was repeatedly applied until the standard deviation of the residuals between the observed and estimated values are less than 1.5 mGal, which led to the elimination of about 17.7% of the shipborne gravity dataset. A comparison between the shipborne gravity data with DTU13 and SSv23.1 satellite altimetry-derived gravity models is done and reported. The corresponding results revealed that altimetry models almost have identical data content when compared one another, where the DTU13 gave better results with a mean and standard deviation of ?2.40 and 8.71 mGal, respectively. A statistical comparison has been made between different global geopotential models (GGMs) and shipborne gravity data. The Spectral Enhancement Method was applied to overcome the existing spectral gap between the GGMs and shipborne gravity data. EGM2008 manifested the best results with differences characterised with a mean of 1.35 mGal and a standard deviation of 11.11 mGal. Finally, the least-squares collocation (LSC) was implemented to combine the shipborne gravity data with DTU13 in order to create a unique and consistent gravity field over the Red Sea with no data voids. The combined data were independently tested using a total number of 95 randomly chosen shipborne gravity stations. The comparison between the extracted shipborne gravity data and DTU13 altimetry anomalies before and after applying the LSC revealed that a significant improvement is procurable from the combined dataset, in which the mean and standard deviation of the differences dropped from ?3.60 and 9.31 mGal to ?0.39 and 2.04 mGal, respectively.