Proof of Concept showed that Kartotrak can help working on different rehabilitation scenarios by optimizing risks and costs

EDF CIDEN, France
Catherine Ollivier Dehaye
Soil Remediation Advisory Engineer and Head of the Environment Deconstruction Group CIDEN

The collaboration between EDF CIDEN (“Centre d’Ingénierie Déconstruction et Environnement des Centrales Nucléaires”) and Geovariances dates back to 2008 with a first prospective study on the Effluent Treatment Station of the former Brennilis NPP to illustrate the added value of geostatistics for the characterization of radiological contaminations.

3D pollutant mapping with Kartotrak
3D pollutant mapping with Kartotrak

This collaboration has intensified since 2013, with a guided evaluation of Kartotrak with data related to a three dimensions chemical contamination allowing using the software integrated workflow for a particular case study. 3D visualization of data allowed correcting a small error in the database. A base map was loaded and interactively georeferenced in the local projection system of the vector files.

The exploratory data analysis then focused on data correlations in order to highlight the different pollutants (PAHs) links and singular values.

The analysis of the directional variograms (on the horizontal and vertical axes) showed a very clear spatial structure of the phenomenon, which was taken into account to compute different estimation maps. The relationship with the local hydrogeological context was also established. The uncertain areas and volume estimates were also calculated demonstrating the relevance of Kartotrak for this type of study.

Catherine Ollivier Dehaye (Soil Remediation Advisory Engineer and Head of the Environment Deconstruction Group CIDEN) says:

“The assets of Kartotrak are numerous:

  • it allows consolidating diagnosis data by identifying outliers and controlling data;
  • it allows visualizing data in 3D and best interpreting them by making the link with our GIS and its integrated data;
  • it allows evaluating the areas that present the greatest uncertainty in the results, which guides us for complementing our on-site characterizations and for refining our estimates of volumes of impacted soils;
  • it also allows working on different rehabilitation scenarios by optimizing risks and costs.

These reasons and the fact that it fully meets our operational engineering needs, led us to acquire Kartotrak, all the most it is user-friendly.”

Besides software acquisition, a training session organized in the premises of EDF CIDEN allowed implying 7 people with geostatistics. Further works are today underway with CIDEN teams, including the characterization of civil engineering structures in nuclear facilities under decommissioning process.