Title: OAK RIDGE WASTE DISPOSITION: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU HAVE NO PLACE TO GO*
Abstract:The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation has conducted leading research in a number of areas, including neutron science, genetics, and environmental sciences. Oak Ridge is also a le...The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation has conducted leading research in a number of areas, including neutron science, genetics, and environmental sciences. Oak Ridge is also a leader in a more dubious category — it is the home of DOE’s largest inventory of stored low-level, mixed low-level, and remote-handled transuranic waste. Without accelerated and innovative waste disposition strategies, this inventory will only increase. The volume of stored low-level waste, for instance, is projected to exceed 95,000 m 3 within ten years. Oak Ridge is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to accelerate the disposal of mixed and low-level waste: • getting several waste streams “road ready” for disposal while awaiting programmatic decisions on disposal outlets; • pursuing alternate disposal at Subtitle C or D landfills and other recent regulatory avenues; • reclassifying waste where analytical data supports reclassification; and • establishing a single, reservation-wide waste acceptance and certification program that is based on treatment and disposal requirements, and not on storage requirements. These efforts will support Oak Ridge’s goal of accelerating legacy waste disposition by at least ten years over the baseline in the Accelerated Cleanup Plan: Paths to Closure. An infrastructure will remain to support direct shipment of newly generated waste for treatment and disposal so that no new legacy waste is ever generated.Read More
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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