The Road to Re-certification: WIPP TRU Waste Inventory

Conference · Sat Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2006

OSTI ID:21210680

Crawford, B A; Lott, S A; Sparks, L D; Van Soest, G; Mclnroy, B ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory -Carlsbad Operations, 115 N. Main St., Carlsbad, NM 88220 (United States)

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), located near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is a deep geologic repository for the disposal of transuranic (TRU) wastes generated by atomic energy defense activities. The WIPP Land Withdrawal Act (LWA) [1] requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to submit documentation to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that demonstrates WIPP's continuing compliance with the disposal regulations in Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 191 Subparts B and C, not later than five years after initial receipt of waste for disposal at the repository, and every five years thereafter until the decommissioning of the facility is completed. On May 18, 1998, after review of the Compliance Certification Application (CCA) (63 FR 27405), the EPA certified that the WIPP did comply with the final disposal regulations and criteria of 40 CFR parts 191 and 194. On March 26, 1999, the first receipt of contact-handled (CH) TRU waste was received at WIPP thus initiating the 5-year countdown to the first re-certification. Five years after the first receipt of waste at WIPP, on March 26, 2004, the DOE submitted a Compliance Re-certification Application (CRA) [2]. The CRA includes TRU waste inventory as a key factor. The TRU waste inventory defines what is expected to be emplaced in the repository; and, therefore, how the performance of the repository will be affected. Performance of the WIPP is determined via the Performance Assessment (PA), a set of complex algorithms used to model the long-term performance of the repository. The TRU waste inventory data that are important to this assessment include: 1) volumes of stored, projected and emplaced waste; 2) radionuclide activity concentrations; 3) waste material parameter densities; 4) estimates of the masses of chelating agents; 5) estimates of the oxyanions; 6) estimates of expected cement masses; and 7) estimates of the types and amounts of materials that will be used to emplace the waste. The data that are collected and maintained as the TRU waste inventory provide the waste source term used in the PA to model long-term repository performance. (authors)

• Research Organization: WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 13023, Tucson, AZ, 85732-3023 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 21210680
• Report Number(s): INIS-US--09-WM-06394
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
ALPHA-BEARING WASTES
CERTIFICATION
DECOMMISSIONING
DOCUMENTATION
INVENTORIES
NEW MEXICO
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL
REGULATIONS
STORAGE FACILITIES
US EPA
WIPP