Under the brilliant leadership of the PESA SA/NT Branch Vice President, Paul Strong, 2024 has seen the regular monthly lunchtime meetings continue with a smorgasbord of topics which are highly recommended for other branches and webinars.
July 2024 – Markus Häring,who recently returned to Adelaide to retire, spoke on Exploration for radioactive waste repositories near urban areas. Safe long term storage of nuclear waste is required even in countries without nuclear power plants. Switzerland produces about one third of its power with nuclear energy. The volume of high- medium- and low-level radioactive waste of over sixty years of production is in the same order as toxic heavy metal waste from industry and consumption.
Radioactive waste has a precisely determined half-life and can be stored and monitored in controlled containments.
In contrast, heavy metal waste is diffusely distributed, is not inventoried, and is of indefinite toxicity.
Nagra, the Swiss cooperative for the disposal of radioactive waste has explored for a suitable location in various rock formations throughout Switzerland.
After forty years of exploration, a suitable site has been found that is not only geologically safe, but also meets all political requirements. Markus asserted that if it is possible to find a suitable site for nuclear waste in a country with nine million inhabitants that is smaller than the Eyre Peninsula and on top is located in a tectonically active region, it should be feasible to find a safe storage location in South Australia.
August 2024 – Dr. Ben Rostron. Ben is a Professor Emeritus of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta and the President of Isobrine Solutions Inc. and was selected by the GSA Hydrogeology Division as its 2024 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer.
He spoke on the geology and hydrogeology at AQUISTORE: Canada’s first CO2 storage project associated with a commercial-scale coal-fired power plant.
The Aquistore research project is part of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage project in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Carbon dioxide is captured from the Boundary Dam coal-fired power generation station and transported via underground pipeline to both the Weyburn oil field for EOR, and to a 3400 m deep injection well at Aquistore.
Initial CO2 injection at Aquistore took place in April 2015, and through August 2023 more than 500,000 tonnes have been injected. Geology and hydrogeology have played a key role in the entire project using both pre-existing and newly-acquired data.
Hydrogeological characterization efforts were divided into four parts: regional hydrogeological and hydrochemical mapping of the site; hydraulic characterization of the storage zone during drilling/testing of the 3400m deep injection and nearby 3400m deep observation well; installation of an extensive shallow groundwater monitoring network; and ongoing hydrogeological and hydrochemical monitoring of the shallow groundwater in the area.
All of the geological and hydrogeological characterization results indicate strongly favourable conditions for geological storage at the site: there are no significant faults in the immediate area of the storage site; the regional sealing formation is continuous in the area; the reservoir is not adversely affected by knolls on the surface of the underlying
Precambrian crystalline basement; and the shallow groundwater and soil gas horizons do not appear to be hydraulically connected to the deep injection horizons in the subsurface.
These results were subsequently used for project planning, risk assessment, and permitting of the site; demonstrating the overall storage integrity; and for Measurement, Monitoring, and Verification of CO2 storage for regulatory and public assurance. This talk will highlight some of the geology and hydrogeology results from Aquistore and provide an update on a couple of the more interesting outcomes of the project thus far.
Workshop
August 2024 – Dr Steve Hasiotis, who is currently Professor of Ichnology at The University of Kansas, gave a two day masterclass at the Tonsley Core Library looking at core material from a range of Cooper Basin and Otway Basin (Penola Trough) cores.
Steve studies organism-media interactions and their implications for paleontology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleoenvironments, paleoecology, paleopedology, paleohydrology, and paleoclimate. His research focuses on interactions in the continental realm, where organism activity relates to the history of the soil formation and the record of paleo-biodiversity not recorded by body fossils in deposits where they are lacking.
His interests include the distribution of trace fossils in the continental realm, evolution of organism behaviour, evolution of continental ecosystems, the interpretation of past climates from paleosols, and effects of extinctions on soil biota and their recovery.
Sponsorship/Awards
The SA/NT Branch (with the support of the South Australian Department for Energy and Mining) award a prize for the best student poster. The 2023 prize went to Marilyn Whitbread and was awarded at the July Technical Meeting.
PESA SA/NT PESA (with support from the Northern Territory Government) also award a prize to the author of the best Honours, Masters or PhD thesis or research paper in 2023 on petroleum or related energy resource geosciences in the Northern Territory.
The 2023 prize went to Kosuke Tsutsui, who presented a precis of his research at the June technical meeting. His award was accepted by fellow student Iain Campbell at the July technical meeting.
Upcoming Technical Meetings and Field Trips
The forward plan for luncheon meetings is full of a diverse range of topics. All meetings are held at the historic Ayres House on North Terrace on the last Thursday of the month.
- 26 September – Tim Rady (Geomorph Energy) will present on their PNG exploration program.
- 31 October – Glenn Toogood and Tim Rady (EntX) will present “Salt Cavern storage potential of the Polda Basin, South Australia.”
When the weather warms up the SA/NT Branch has organised two brilliant field trips. You should save the dates and be ready to participate in the joy of geoscience.
- The ever-popular, annual Geology of Wine trip this year is to the Clare Valley. It will be held Sunday 13 October and be led by Professor Alan Collins (University of Adelaide).
- After a couple of successful trips the Carrickalinga, Myponga & Cape Jarvis field trip ably led by Rhodri Johns and Elinor Alexander is planned for the weekend of 16-17 November.
