Waste Management: Cleanup costs of DOE sites to total at least $230 billion; Dry spent fuel storage planned for North Anna; NRC undertakes changes to HLW,LLW regulations
It will take up to 75 years and between $230 billion and $350 billion to clean up the Department of Energy`s former weapons productions facilities, according to the 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, issued on April 3, 1995. Thomas Grumbly, assistant secretary for environmental management, said that this is the most reliable estimate to date. Other estimates made in the past for the amount of time the cleanup would take were 30 years (the very rough estimate of former Environmental Restoration and Waste Management head Leo Duffy), and 50 years, an estimate mentioned last November during the American Nuclear Society`s Winter Meeting by a DOE representative. Most of the cleanup costs would be expended over a 40-year period, but work at some sites would continue until 2070. Approximately 70 percent of the cleanup costs would go to clean up five sites; Hanford and Savannah River, 21 percent each; Rocky Flats, 10 percent; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 10 percent; and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, 5 percent. The cost estimates are higher than the DOE`s proposed budget for cleanup and environmental restoration, which has been around $6 billion a year. Nor do they include remediation of sites for which no viable cleanup technology exists (the Nevada Test Site and the U.S. Navy`s nuclear propulsion facilities) or those plants that are still producing or disassembling nuclear weapons parts (such as the Pantex facility, near Amarillo, Tex.). Expenditures already made during the first five years of the cleanup program, estimated at $23 billion, are also not included in the new cost estimates. The DOE estimates that the total amount of radioactive waste that will result from the cleanup and requiring disposal will be around 33 million yd{sup 3}.
- OSTI ID:
- 136143
- Journal Information:
- Nuclear News, Journal Name: Nuclear News Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 38; ISSN NUNWA8; ISSN 0029-5574
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Estimating the Cold War mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management report. Executive summary, March 1995