GEO MRI | NMR Roadside Service in the Wild West: Subsurface remediation @ UMTRA, Moab | Utah

You Work Realm: Soil Remediation | Mining |Geotechnics

Toolstrings: NMR borehole probe 2.38 inch diameter

I still get the goosepimpels today when I think about listening to the AMERICA song “On a horse with no name” as a little boy – over and over again. On the radio, with my older siblings, no matter where: you would always hear this song - and associated with it was the big dream of "freedom", no matter how imaginary it may be for each individual person...

From Silverton | CO one drives long distances through relative “nothing-ness”. You get out of the vehicle and hear insects, a few birds, the slight rustling of plants in the wind, which have adapted to the harsh living conditions over time. Once in the Moab area, ARCHES National Park dominates everything else. Today it is easy to get through everywhere here. But you definitely want to avoid getting “stuck” out there

In this environment, the lack of water naturally becomes acute very quickly, and with it the issue of “dehydration”. The park management takes great care to ensure that the many visitors to the park have enough water with them. Although you cannot force individuals to drink enough fluids, the park has provided very good information on the subject.

Fig. 2: "The Sacred Mountains" -- as one of the Pajutes elders aptly expressed it: "I think they sang here...sang for the hill, sang for this mountain,...my grandmother used to say: “These mountains are alive, ...the mountains can hear you.” These words indeed easily resonate when you drive through this Wild West Land, being amazed about the power of this mighty nature.

After this nature experience, which wonderfully connects the earth's history with my own, it was time to think again about serious work: a soil remediation project to clean the natural environment from the effects of uranium mining in the state of Utah: UMTRA.

Vista-Clara Inc. took the initiative a while ago and approached one of the national research laboratories about installing a monitoring program (initially with some of the company's own research funds) to quantitatively | qualitatively examine with NMR-technology the spreading and distribution of chemicals used for neutralizing uranium residues in the soil. Luckily, Berkeley agreed, contacted a few of the designated UMTRA project managers, and from then on a successful collaboration was established.

Working with the NMR-Logging probes has by now become routine. And with the help of their energetic hands of the UMTRA team, we made rapid progress to set up the experiment and subsequently carried out the measurements in 2 monitoring boreholes at depth intervals of 0.25 meters from the borehole bottom to the surface.

The measurements “by hand” were necessary after an automated NMR logging measuring probe (controlled via GUI from a computer in the home office of Vista-Clara Inc.), which was able to travel down the borehole at specified time intervals, was “saved” prior to be being hit by a hefty snow-meltwater flood during the spring season. Our manual measurement was, so to speak, the first resumption of these automated measurements since the flooding.

With the latest experiences from Silverton|CO and in Peru, it was almost "easy-going" that day: uneventful | everything went well. We chose a specific type of data recording (the same we used for the Gold-King Mine|CO logging-run), and produced first-class data, which are characterized by strong SNR (signal noise ratio) characteristics.

Fig. 3: UMTRA-A-TEAM Ken | James | Tom, doing the hard manual labor that the original mechanical experimental set-up provided prior to a flood event in the Spring time: an automated regular NMR-Logging system to record data at prescribed time- and depth intervals – all controlled through a remote operation based out of Vista Clara Inc.‘s headquarter in Mukilteo | north of the Metropolitan Seattle. It’ll be reinstalled eventually.

The biggest challenge that day was actually the heat (well beyond the 100º F mark). You may notice on the photos (Fig. 3) how even the safety helmets were removed throughout the day... Other than that: Everyone was happy after a solid 8-hour day.

And the next morning it was already time to move on to the next and (unfortunately) last location of this miraculous NMR logging tour: Florence|AZ !

! Carpe Diem | And: Always Remember Your Name !