Waste Generator Instructions: Key to Successful Implementation of the US DOE's 435.1 for Transuranic Waste Packaging Instructions (LA-UR-12-24155) - 13218
- LANL EES-12, Carlsbad, NM, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- Aspen Resources Ltd., Inc., P.O. Box 3038, Boulder, CO 80307 (United States)
- LANL NCO-4, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- LANL NPI-7, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
In times of continuing fiscal constraints, a management and operation tool that is straightforward to implement, works as advertised, and virtually ensures compliant waste packaging should be carefully considered and employed wherever practicable. In the near future, the Department of Energy (DOE) will issue the first major update to DOE Order 435.1, Radioactive Waste Management. This update will contain a requirement for sites that do not have a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) waste certification program to use two newly developed technical standards: Contact-Handled Defense Transuranic Waste Packaging Instructions and Remote-Handled Defense Transuranic Waste Packaging Instructions. The technical standards are being developed from the DOE O 435.1 Notice, Contact-Handled and Remote-Handled Transuranic Waste Packaging, approved August 2011. The packaging instructions will provide detailed information and instruction for packaging almost every conceivable type of transuranic (TRU) waste for disposal at WIPP. While providing specificity, the packaging instructions leave to each site's own discretion the actual mechanics of how those Instructions will be functionally implemented at the floor level. While the Technical Standards are designed to provide precise information for compliant packaging, the density of the information in the packaging instructions necessitates a type of Rosetta Stone that translates the requirements into concise, clear, easy to use and operationally practical recipes that are waste stream and facility specific for use by both first line management and hands-on operations personnel. The Waste Generator Instructions provide the operator with step-by-step instructions that will integrate the sites' various operational requirements (e.g., health and safety limits, radiological limits or dose limits) and result in a WIPP certifiable waste and package that can be transported to and emplaced at WIPP. These little known but widely productive Waste Generator Instructions (WGIs) have been used occasionally in the past at large sites for treatment and packaging of TRU waste. The WGIs have resulted in highly efficient waste treatment, packaging and certification for disposal of TRU waste at WIPP. For example, a single WGI at LANL, combined with an increase in gram loading, resulted in a mind boggling 6,400% increase in waste loading for {sup 238}Pu heat source waste. In fact, the WGI combined with a new Contact Handled (CH) TRU Waste Content (TRUCON) Code provided a massive increase in shippable wattage per Transuranic Package Transporter-II (TRUPACT-II) over the previously used and more restrictive TRUCON Code that have been used previously for the heat source waste. In fact, the use of the WGI process at LANL's TA-55 facility reduced non-compliant drums for WIPP certification and disposal from a 13% failure rate down to a 0.5% failure rate and is expected to further reduce the failure rate to zero drums per year. The inherent value of the WGI is that it can be implemented in a site's current procedure issuance process and it provides documented proof of what actions were taken for each waste stream packaged. The WGI protocol provides a key floor-level operational component to achieve goal alignment between actual site operations, the WIPP TRU waste packaging instructions, and DOE O 435.1. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9-332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22224974
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-13-WM-13218; TRN: US14V0422045929
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2013: Waste Management Conference: International collaboration and continuous improvement, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 24-28 Feb 2013; Other Information: Country of input: France
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Hanford Site Transuranic (TRU) Waste Certification Plan
It Just Keeps Getting Better-Tru Waste Inventory