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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3 The Committee's Assessment of the Usefulness for Decision-Makers of the FFRDC's Final Draft Analysis
3 The Committee's Assessment of the Usefulness for Decision-Makers of the FFRDC's Final Draft Analysis
Pages 37-49
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From page 37... ...
includes treatment approaches to the SLAW plus the directly related ancillary processes such as pre-treatment and secondary waste management. Neither the FFRDC nor the committee was tasked to offer views on broader policy issues or on the overall system for managing tank waste at Hanford.
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From page 38... ...
There are, and DOE and others have calculated them in the past, baseline risks and costs of the current situation with the Hanford tanks. That is, the risks, costs, and uncertainties of maintaining the waste at a level that minimizes the likelihood of release of tank waste to the extent feasible in their current configuration.
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From page 39... ...
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Class B or C to Class A to reduce disposal costs at the WCS facility or possibly make the SLAW acceptable for disposal at the EnergySolutions facility near Clive, Utah. The possibility of moving these two radionuclides into the high-level waste (HLW)
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From page 40... ...
For the Hanford tank waste, the obvious analogy is the reprocessing waste at SRS. Indeed, the progress at SRS is a driver of Congress's interest in an assessment of alternative approaches for Hanford SLAW.
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From page 41... ...
The FFRDC team identified two disposal options, and suggested the possibility of a third option at the facility near Clive, Utah. These represent a range of geologic, hydrologic, and other qualities that will have an effect on the transport and fate of any radionuclides that the waste form fails to isolate permanently.
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From page 42... ...
The grouting and steam reforming alternatives that involved disposing of the primary SLAW waste at the IDF would need to overcome the stated preference of the Department of Ecology for a glass waste form (see the subsection in Chapter 2 on the "As Good as Glass" Conundrum)
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From page 43... ...
In the committee's view, the major programmatic risks are: Funding needs: The annual funding needs to develop, design, and build SLAW facilities, plus the future annual costs for the other components of Hanford tank waste cleanup, are estimated by the 43
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From page 44... ...
Notably, the funding requirement profile in the FFRDC report does not in clude the annual cleanup cost for the Hanford site's other waste legacies, such as decontamination and decommissioning of buildings, waste burial ground cleanup, and subsurface plume manage ment, which has typically been about $1 billion per year. 1 Waste disposal impediments: The SLAW facility plans to produce two major immobilized wastes: the SLAW in the form of glass, grout, or a steam reformed product; and grouted secondary wastes.
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From page 45... ...
to destroy or remove organic chemicals to meet EPA land disposal restrictions, and additional pre-treatment to remove strontium may be cost-effective if the SLAW disposal at WCS or at the EnergySolutions facility is pursued. However, in this section, the focus is on hybrid treatment approaches involving multiple immobilization technologies, and the combination of treatment and pre-treatment options is addressed in earlier subsections on Broader Waste Management System and The Major Role of Pre-Treatment.
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From page 46... ...
It would be extremely unrealistic to think that the nature of the Hanford tank waste easily or inexpensively lends itself to multiple treatment options; on the other hand, the uncertainty of current technologies and the length of time of the management project suggest, respectively, the need for and the opportunity to experiment with parallel, sequential, or hybrid approaches. Could Developments Outside the Scope of This Study Affect the Use of the FFRDC's Report and the Committee's Review?
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From page 47... ...
This goes further than simply demon strating compliance, but rather demonstrates an understanding of how the waste forms and disposal environments actually interact.
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From page 48... ...
Other factors that would affect the selection of a SLAW treatment alter native include: The costs and risks of delays in making decisions or funding shortfalls in terms of additional resource requirements and the increased chance of tank leaks or structural failures over time and the need to address the consequences (notably, all 149 single-shell tanks have exceeded their design life and the 28 double-shell tanks will have exceeded their design life before the waste is slated to be removed) ; DOE's proposed reinterpretation of the definition of HLW waste could change the SLAW size and performance requirements by altering the feed volume and composition depending on how the reinterpretation is implemented; Thorough consideration of the experience of other DOE sites (e.g., the SRS)
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From page 49... ...
The Committee's Technical Review of the FFRDC's Final Draft Analysis c. Taking positive advantage of the unavoidably long remediation period to improve existing tech nologies and adopt new ones; and d.
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