Re: Future Disposal Costs

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

David,

I don't know how rational our estimates are, but we have done a lot
of wrestling with the costs here.  Only partially out of perversity,
we have been using $666 per cubic foot for an estimate of a final
disposal cost.  That is post processing.  Since we will probably
have to recover the total cost of disposal.  We have to figure in
the cost of a storage facility, salaries, equipment, maintenance,
supplies and final disposal, oops and I forgot to mention processing
such as supercompaction or incineration plus brokering fees for
allowing our waste to vacation at the processor.  The actual cost
then will be very dependent on the amount of waste you generate and
other local factors.  We are a moderately sized Type A Broad Scope
licensee.  Numbers I come up with range from $200 to $400 per cu. ft.
of raw volume depending on waste type assuming income from decayable
waste, and more than $500 at our institution if we don't charge for
decayable waste.  We are guessing that out of that we will hold
$150 to $200 per cubic foot of raw volume for supercompactable waste
to pay for final disposal.  If we are able to incinerate, the cost
we will hold for disposal will be less than $50.  Probably much less.
Hope this helps.  Feel free to call if you have questions

Dale E. Boyce
dale@radpro.uchicago.edu
(312) 702-6299

P.S.  There are companies that are proposing storage facilities.
Some may offer preprocessing and processing.  I would expect that
we'll begin to get some numbers from commercial operations real
soon now.