SRNL All-Pathways Application
- Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC 29808 (United States)
The Environmental Analysis and Performance Modeling group of Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) performs performance assessments of the Savannah River Site (SRS) low-level waste facilities to meet the requirements of DOE Order 435.1. One of the performance objectives in the DOE Order is that the radiological dose to representative members of the public shall not exceed 25 mrem in a year total effective dose equivalent from all exposure pathways, excluding radon. Analysis to meet this performance objective is generally referred to as all-pathways analysis. SRNL performs detailed transient groundwater transport analysis for the waste disposal units, which has been used as input for the groundwater part of all-pathways analysis. The desire to better integrate all-pathways analysis with the groundwater transport analysis lead to the development of a software application named the SRNL All-Pathways Application. Another requirement of DOE Order 435.1 is to assess the impact of nuclear waste disposal on water resources, which SRS has interpreted for groundwater protection as meeting the EPA regulations for radionuclides in drinking water. EPA specifies four separate criteria as part of their implementation guidance for radionuclides, which are specified as maximum contaminant levels (MCL). 1. Beta/gamma emitters have a combined dose limit of 4 mrem/year. 2. Alpha emitters have a combined concentration limit of 15 pCi/L (called gross alpha), excluding uranium and radon, but including radium-226. 3. Combined radium-226 and radium-228 have a concentration limit of 5 pCi/L. 4. Isotopes of uranium have a combined concentration limit of 30 {mu}g/L. The All-Pathways Application was designed to be an easy-to-use software application that utilizes transient concentration results from groundwater transport analysis to (1) calculate the groundwater part of all-pathways dose and to (2) evaluate the four EPA criteria for groundwater protection. An application has been developed to streamline the assessment of performance objective criteria for groundwater using concentration results from groundwater transport analyses. The SRNL All-Pathways Application evaluates the groundwater portion of all-pathways analysis and also evaluates EPA groundwater protection criteria. The application can perform a calculation using a specified inventory to determine if that inventory meets performance objectives, or it can perform a sum of fractions calculation to provide results for each parent chain that are subsequently used to establish limits on the amount of parent radionuclides that can be placed in the waste disposal unit.
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, Illinois 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21144253
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: DD and R 2007: ANS Topical Meeting on Decommissioning, Decontamination, and Reutilization 2007, Chattanooga, TN (United States), 16-19 Sep 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2007 ANS Topical Meeting on Decommissioning, Decontamination, and Reutilization - DD and R 2007, 336 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COMPUTER CODES
DOSE LIMITS
DRINKING WATER
GROUND WATER
LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL
RADIONUCLIDE MIGRATION
RADIUM 226
RADIUM 228
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SIMULATION
URANIUM
US EPA