Savannah River Site Public and Regulatory Involvement in the Inadvertent Disposal of TRU Waste in the E-Area Low-Level Waste (LLW) Trenches
- U. S. Department of Energy, W. T. (Sonny) Goldston, Washington Savannah River Company (United States)
The key to successful public involvement at the Savannah River Site (SRS) has been and continues to be vigorous, up-front involvement of the public, federal and state regulators with technical experts. The SRS Waste Management Program includes all forms of radioactive waste. All of the decisions associated with the management of these wastes are of interest to the public and successful program implementation would be impossible without including the public up-front in the program formulation. Serious problems can result if program decisions are made without public involvement, and if the public is informed after key decisions are made. This paper will describe the regulatory and public involvement program and their effects on the decisions concerning the inadvertent disposal at the Savannah River Site (SRS) of TRU waste in the E-area LLW Facility Trenches. SRS engineers discovered that a small amount of TRU waste was disposed in the E-area LLW trenches in 2003. This discovery was obviously of considerable interest to the State and Federal Regulators, and to the public. In addition to notifications to all interested parties, the first order of business was to ensure that operations continued to be protective of the public and the environment. This paper will describe the interactions with the Department of Energy (DOE), the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the public. In addition the technical details of the inadvertent disposal will be discussed along with the analysis of long term performance of the waste form in the E-Area LLW Trenches and how this information was communicated with all parties. As can be imagined, a decision to dispose of TRU waste onsite versus shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for disposal is of considerable interest to the stakeholders in South Carolina. The events that lead to the inadvertent disposal will be reviewed as well as the new systems put into place to ensure that this event will not happen again in the future. In order to determine alternatives to properly deposition this TRU waste, an evaluation of retrieval of the waste from the trench disposal was performed as well as an options risk analysis to determine the regulatory path forward should the decision be made to dispose of the TRU waste in place. An evaluation of the risks to the workers associated with retrieval was then compared to the risks of continued disposal in the E-Area Trenches. Cost and schedule for each alternative was also compared. This paper will describe the successful results of this technical, regulatory, and public involvement program, explore the challenges, how the accomplishments occurred, and describe the future challenges along with the road map for the future. A comparison with other similar events at other DOE sites will be discussed as well. In doing this, the SRS TRU and LLW programs must be described to give the readers an understanding of the technical complexities that must be communicated successfully to achieve constructive stakeholder participation and regulatory approval. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9 - 332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21319718
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-10-WM-08067; TRN: US10V0369061909
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM'08: Waste Management Symposium 2008 - HLW, TRU, LLW/ILW, Mixed, Hazardous Wastes and Environmental Management - Phoenix Rising: Moving Forward in Waste Management, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 24-28 Feb 2008; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Savannah River Site Public and regulatory involvement in the transuranic (TRU) program and their effect on decisions to dispose of Pu-238 heat source tru waste onsite
INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES USED BY EPA, SCDHEC, AND DOE TO INCREASE STAKEHOLDER AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN THE CLEANUP OF NUCLEAR PRODUCTION FACILITIES