Re: Fwd: Re: Hanford Site Cleanup Standards

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

This is a more complex issue than it appears to be at first.  The NWPA and the Code of Federal Regulation define high-level waste, in addition to SNF, as the waste from the first reprocessing stage and combined waste from subsequent reprocessing stages, which certainly fits the Hanford tanks.  The NWPA further requires HLW to be disposed of in a HLW repository (i.e., Yucca Mountain).  In order to do that, the material must be removed from the tanks and stabilized in a glass or ceramic matrix.  I leave it to the collective knowledge and experience of RADSAFERs to imagine both the occupational hazards and the cost of this process (there are about 200 tanks and they are enormous).



A nummber of in-place stabilization options, as well as options that remove some, but not all, of the tank contents. have been proposed during the last two decades that both are feasible and appear to accomplish the necessary isolation.  By law and regulation "low level radioactive waste" is everything that is neither HLW nor TRU.  Moreover "low level radioactive waste" is NOT NECESSARILY LOW ACTIVITY (see 10 CFR Part 61 for confirmation of this). Also, classifying waste as LLW does not in and of itself imply weaker containment (see references to Greater Than Class C LLW). I have been away from this issue for mre than a decade, but it looks to me as if reclassifying the tank waste is more an effort to avoid having to empty all the tanks and vitrify all the contents (a process that itself produces radioactive waste)than an effort to circumvent safety or cleanup or whatever.  



I agree with the notion that all sides should work together to address this problem.  We tried to do that 15 years ago on the Hanford Citizens' Forum, but DOE's perennial critics aren't interested in finding solutions.



Ruth

-- 

Ruth F. Weiner

ruthweiner@aol.com

505-856-5011

(o)505-284-8406



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/