Review of the Final Draft Analysis of Supplemental Treatment Approaches of Low-Activity Waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Review #3 (2019) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Committee's Technical Review of the FFRDC's Final Draft Analysis
2 The Committee's Technical Review of the FFRDC's Final Draft Analysis
Pages 16-36
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Title 0 Executive Summary 1 Parameters of the Analysis 2 Criteria for Analysis of Treatment Approaches 3 Summaries of Analyses of Treatment Approaches 4 High-Level Comparison of the Five Cases for Hanford SLAW Immobilization Appendix A Pre-treatment Appendix B Vitrification Appendix C Grouting Appendix D Steam Reforming Appendix E Risk Assessment Appendix F Disposal Appendix G Transportation Appendix H Cost-Estimate Methodology and Results Appendix I Regulatory Compliance Appendix J Feed Vector Appendix K Bibliography 1 See http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/nrsb/miscellaneous/ffrdc-2019-4.pdf. 2 See http://dels.nas.edu/Past-Events/Meeting-Supplemental-Treatment/DELS-NRSB-17-02/10052.
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Does the FFRDC analysis describe a framework of decisions that need to be made? Does the FFRDC report provide a strong technical basis in support of the major decisions to be made?
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In Appendix E, the FFRDC team describes two principal reasons why the scope of the scenarios it considered were incomplete (as paraphrased and quoted from p. 148 of the FFRDC report)
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for the vitrified LAW per se and the grouted secondary waste for the Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF)
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24) , the FFRDC mentions the assessed benefits or advantages of each approach to treating Hanford SLAW, including waste form volume of both primary and secondary wastes, pre-treatment requirements, ease of operation, and flexibility, and notes that the "benefits of the individual treatment options are summarized in Section 3.0 and detailed in Appendices A-D." For the benefits of vitrification of the SLAW, Section 3.2.4 (p.
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, whose contents are drawn from the report and appendixes. What is currently missing, however, which would help to inform the ultimate selection of a preferred alternative by decision-makers using the FFRDC report is a summary of findings in a format that reflects the "marginal analysis" perspective that is fundamental to the logic of cost-benefit analysis.
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The FFRDC report states that meeting the funding requirements is one of the major challenges in successfully treating the SLAW, and the committee agrees. The committee also notes that these annual funding requirements do not include requirements to continue aspects of Hanford cleanup other than tank waste, such as facility decontamination and decommissioning, managing contaminated subsurface water plumes, and maintaining and operating common site infrastructure (e.g., water, roads, electricity, effluent treatment, waste evaporators)
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Thus, the duration of the Hanford tank cleanup mission would inevitably be substantially increased. Regulatory Compliance The FFRDC report (see Section 3.2.7, p.
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This highlights the fact that the identified approaches -- vitrification, grouting, and steam reforming -- are part of a larger system that provides the LAW feed and considers multiple potential disposal locations. In addition to the LAW feed from other parts of the tank waste remediation system, the SLAW facility will produce and have to manage its own secondary wastes and may include pre-treatment to make the SLAW more suitable for treatment or disposal.
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has yet to approve waste acceptance criteria that would allow disposal of grouted secondary waste or even the primary vitrified LAW. The second disposal site analyzed is operated by WCS, located near Andrews, Texas.
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During the information-gathering meeting on May 16, 2019, slide #37 presented by the FFRDC team concluded: Treatment for LDR organics may be required for some of the waste for both on-site and out-of state disposal. Technetium and iodine removal is not needed for out-of-state disposal of grouted or steam reformed waste forms.
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These secondary waste streams may be handled by direct disposal (which was assumed in the analysis) or by further processing for incorporation into waste forms designed for iodine.
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led to a currently adopted value of 327,000 years, as of May 2016. The Major Role of Secondary Waste While the FFRDC report mentions the challenges of secondary waste in the Executive Summary and explains its origins in Appendix F, the committee believes that the FFRDC does not emphasize strongly enough to decision-makers the central role that secondary waste plays in meeting disposal waste acceptance criteria.
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. The PA evaluated the performance of vitrified primary waste and grouted secondary wastes in the IDF, but did not address the performance of the IDF containing waste from the grouting and steam reforming alternatives.
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For this reason, there has been a substantial amount of research, mostly funded by DOE, to investigate new materials for the selective removal of iodine from the HLW waste streams, its incorporation into durable waste forms, and the development of getters to capture released iodine in the near-field of the disposal environment. Although the report raises the possibility of using getters in the grout, the report does not provide an explanation or analysis of the materials that would be used, nor is the possibility of isotopic dilution discussed.
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Options for the treatment of the secondary waste streams also need to be described and evaluated. A comparison of material properties of the three waste forms.
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In summary, the FFRDC report fails to muster the extensive data in the literature on the different waste forms and present a comparison that highlights the pros and cons of each. The committee notes that this is attempted, as an example for grout (p.
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This means that, in addition to physical characteristics of the waste form and disposal site identified in the previous two bullets, one has to consider a range of quasi-tech nical factors including cost, reliability of technology, technological readiness, schedule, and safety, and their relative importance, i.e., "all things considered." Additionally, it is important to note that there are secondary wastes from the vitrification and steam reforming processes that were projected to contain significant amounts of 99Tc and 129I, so this waste stream is the most important contrib utor to calculated dose rate as compared to the immobilized SLAW per se. In other words, "as good as glass" could mean the primary and secondary waste forms.
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Can form the basis for further work as described below in the committee's findings and recommendations. Analysis of Costs, Benefits, and Risks Finding 2-1 The cost estimates in the FFRDC report are based on technologies that, for the most part, have not yet been fully developed, tested, or deployed for Hanford's particular, and particularly complex, tank wastes, and instead use costs from similar technologies.
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Pre-Treatment to Remove Iodine-129 and Technetium-99 Finding 4-1 The FFRDC performed an analysis of whether removal of iodine-129 and technetium-99 was needed to comply with the disposal waste acceptance criteria, and examined the status of technologies for removing these radionuclides from the SLAW feed stream, but the FFRDC report does not respond fully to the congressional direction (in Sec.
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Highlighting the important contribution of the iodine-129 in the secondary waste streams disposed at the IDF to the total estimated radiation dose rate to the receptors; d. Underscoring the regulatory and acceptance uncertainties regarding approaches other than vitrifi cation technology for processing the SLAW; and e.
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