Long-Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites (2000) / Chapter Skim
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3 Contaminant Reduction
3 Contaminant Reduction
Pages 25-34
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From page 25... ...
Processing of highlevel radioactive waste from tanks may be used to separate and concentrate the more radioactive materials for long-term management, leaving behind a lower activity waste that may have a less stringent requirement for future management. Some proposed solutions for the safe management and disposal of highly radioactive wastes containing long-lived radionuclides have focused on separating these radionuclide components of the wastes and transmuting them by neutron bombardment to form nuclides that would be either stable or radioactive with much shorter half-lives (National Research Council, 1996b)
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From page 26... ...
Hazardous substances found in remediated tanks include residual waste, lead used as shielding, and chemicals used in cleaning, plating, reprocessing, and separations operations as well as in machining and fabrication operations. The decontamination approaches for these materials are often the same as those used for radioactive materials, although the regulations governing them and the permissible ultimate disposal methods may be very different.
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From page 27... ...
In essence, there may be interim states such that waste management may be phased, and that additional contamination reduction may be carried out to reduce risk in the future on sites or objects remediated to interim states. Such possibilities will continue to exist if a dynamic program of scientific and technical development is pursued toward improved scientific understanding and new methods for contamination reduction, even after a site or facility has been deactivated.
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From page 28... ...
Waste Storage Tanks Underground waste tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory were used for storage of liquid waste from the processing of irradiated fuel elements. In general, sites with underground tanks formerly used for high-level radioactive waste will not be released for public use in any foreseeable time frame.
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From page 29... ...
Buried Waste A certain amount of long-lived radioactive waste currently buried will probably be removed for further processing and transfer to another storage site or to a repository. Such waste includes TRU wastes buried in trenches and pits in the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL)
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From page 30... ...
TRU waste is generated during research, development, nuclear weapons production, and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. Soil Contaminated soil is present at the major DOE weapons sites, especially at Hanford, Savannah River, Idaho Falls, Rocky Flats, the Nevada Test Site, and Oak Ridge, where large, diverse, and highly radioactive operations were carried out.
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From page 31... ...
The magnitude and severity of the water contamination problem is strongly influenced by the nature of the site, especially the composition and structure of the local geological formations and the climate. An essentially dry climate such as prevails at the Nevada Test Site, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and the Hanford Site poses very different problems from those regions having a wet climate such as found at the Oak Ridge Reservation and the Savannah River Site.
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From page 32... ...
Atomic Energy Commission, 1974; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1998 and in review; Federal Register Notice 63FR64132, 1998; U.S.
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From page 33... ...
Collaboration across sites produces an important gain in efficiency in site characterization measurements such as types of contaminants and environmental properties, as opposed to ad hoc individual site effort. 3 This article elicited many comments in the Letters section of subsequent issues of Physics Today (e.g., April and May 2000)
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From page 34... ...
Discussions, studies, and actions should take place for the purpose of reviewing existing compliance guidelines and determining any appropriate research necessary to quantify the risk of cancer and other health problems from low level exposures to be used to guide decontamination operations.
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