Esc Phase I: Locating And Mapping Drilling Mud Pits At The Central Nevada Test Area

An Expedited Site Characterization (ESC) was recently carried out at the Central Nevada Test<br>Area (CNTA) for the U.S. Department of Energy. The CNTA was the site of several deep well<br>drilling operations in the late 1960’s. One of these wells was the site of a nuclear detonation in<br>1968 (Project Faultless). The focus of the ESC was to locate and characterize contaminants<br>associated with drilling mud disposed of in pits. Most of these mud pits have been backfilled<br>and their exact locations were not known. The objective of Phase I was to locate the boundaries<br>of the mud pits using non-invasive and minimally invasive geophysical techniques. Accurate<br>site maps developed from existing data, observations and a topographic survey served as a<br>positional reference for all measurements and subsequent chemical sampling. The results from<br>Phase I provided a conceptual model of site conditions and guided the chemical sampling in<br>Phase II.