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Appendix D
List of Recommendations from
The State of Development of Waste Forms for Mixed
Wastes: U.S. Deparoner't of Energy 's Office of
Environmental Management
COMMITTEE ON MIXED WASTES
PAUL A. DEJONGHE, Chair, Study Centre for Nuclear Research (retired),
Mol. Belgium
ANN N. CLARKE, ANC Associates, Inc., Brentwood, Tennessee
JURGEN H. EXNER, JHE Technology Systems, Inc., Alamo, California
KENT F. HANSEN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
JOANN S. LIGHTY, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
RICHARD J. SAMELSON, Consultant, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
MARTIN J. STEINDLER, Argonne National Laboratory (retired), Argonne,
Illinois
BRUCE M. THOMSON, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
RECOMMENDATIONS
General
The Mixed Waste Focus Area (MWFA) should no longer emphasize the
development of new classes of waste forms. The MWFA should emphasize the
engineering design, integration, and scale-up of its proposed treatment
processes and their demonstration and deployment, as needed, at the DOE sites.
The MWFA should continue its practice of defining, identifying, and
responding to technology deficiencies.
The MWFA should broaden its use of a systems approach in selecting,
developing, and deploying technologies. This approach would include
characterization of the waste and definition of the required performance of a
proposed treatment technology, based on EM's needs, regulatory requirements,
and stakeholder expectations.
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APPENDIX D
59
Waste Characterization
The MWFA should develop simplified methods to characterize the waste, with
emphasis on nondestructive examination and nondestructive assay techniques.
According to available inventory data, emphasis should be placed on developing
better methods to determine heavy metals and solvent contamination in the
waste.
The MWFA should continue to develop, demonstrate, and encourage
deployment of techniques and procedures to ensure that all new waste streams
are adequately characterized.
The MWFA should strive for a balance between the risks, benefits, and cost of
detailed characterization and the risks, benefits, and cost to adapt or to develop
more robust treatment technologies that can handle a wide variety of waste
compositions. Both characterization and technology development efforts should
be pursued.
Treatment Technologies
The MWFA should integrate treatment technologies being developed for its five
treatment groups into a mixed waste treatment strategy. This strategy should
consider the waste form as a part of an overall mixed waste management
system that includes:
compatibility of waste form with transportation and disposal options,
trade-offs between risks to personnel associated with additional waste
characterization and additional costs of a more robust treatment and
stabilization system, and
trade-offs between the increased number of disposal options for a very
stable waste form and the lower costs but reduced disposal options for
less stable waste forms.
The MWFA should demonstrate new treatment technologies on at least the pilot
plant scale using real wastes or realistic surrogates before the technology is
designated as ready for deployment.
The MWFA should continue to address technology deficiencies that it has
identified through input from the Site Technology Coordinating Groups and
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60
TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
update its Technical Baseline Report to reflect progress in addressing these
deficiencies.
The MWFA should continue to provide research funding for developing robust
processes, such as the plasma torch that can treat and stabilize waste of poorly
defined or variable composition, recognizing the trade-off between better waste
characterization and development of improved treatment technology.
Waste Form Characterization and Performance Assessment
OST should continue to support programs aimed at fundamental understanding
of waste form durability and degradation processes. These programs should
lead to a better representation of the waste form in performance assessment
(PA) modeling.
OST should work to promote consensus among the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC),
DOE, and the scientific community on waste form testing methods that will be
generally acceptable for providing at least a qualitative evaluation of long-term
waste form performance in disposal environments.
OST should support efforts to obtain data that will allow a more realistic
inclusion of waste forms in PA models, including intrusion scenarios. Without
such data the waste form will never receive proper credit in PA, with the
resulting cost penalties for additional engineered barriers and possible
restriction in site selection.
OST should play a more significant role in promoting (funding) cooperation
among investigators who are characterizing waste forms and those who are
developing PA models to help ensure that characterization data are useful for
PA models, and that PA models properly incorporate this data.
The MWFA should continue basic research related to the understanding of the
physical and chemical attributes of waste foes.
Regulatory Guidelines
Environmental Management (EM) should work with EPA and the USNRC to
agree on clear guidelines that define acceptable waste forms for future disposal
facilities. This should be done as soon as possible to reduce the risk of EM
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APPENDIX D
61
deploying technologies that are later judged to be inadequate due to
unanticipated regulatory requirements.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
waste forms
