Underground Corrosion after 32 Years: A Study of Fate and Transport

In 1970, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) implemented the most ambitious and comprehensive long-term corrosion behavior test to date for stainless steels in soil environments. Over 32 years have passed since scientists buried 6,324 specimens from stainless steel types, specialty alloys, composite configurations, and multiple material forms and treatment conditions at six distinctive soil-type sites throughout the country. Today, there are more than 190 specimens per site, exceeding a total of 1000 specimens that remain undisturbed, a buried treasure of subsurface scientific data. This research project advocates the completion of the NIST corrosion study along with a thorough examination of the soil and environment surrounding the specimens. The project takes an interdisciplinary research approach that will correlate the complicated interrelationships among metal integrity, corrosion rates, corrosion mechanisms, soil properties, soil microbiology, plant and animal interaction with corrosion products, and fate and transport of metallic ions. The results will provide much-needed data on corrosion rates, underground material degradation, and the behavior of corrosion products in the near-field vadose zone. The data will improve the ability to predict the fate and transport of chemical and radiological contaminants at sites throughout the DOE complex. The research scope of work is limited to one of the six available sites