skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Waste Estimation from a Wide-Area Radiological Incident: The Impact of Geography and Urban Footprint - 16256

Conference ·
OSTI ID:22838114
 [1]; ;  [2]; ;  [3]
  1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711 (United States)
  2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460 (United States)
  3. Eastern Research Group, Inc., Morrisville, NC 27560 (United States)

In the planning and preparedness stages for a response to a radiological incident, it is important to include waste management considerations when developing the decontamination/demolition/cleanup approach because waste management can be a driver for time and cost for return to normalcy. Waste management is also inextricably linked to the geography and urban footprint of the impacted area. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Waste Estimation Support Tool (WEST) is a novel application based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Hazus-MH software. WEST enables users to estimate the characteristics, amount, and residual radioactivity of waste generated from remediation and cleanup activities after a radiological incident, including incidents caused by radiological dispersal devices and improvised nuclear devices, as well as nuclear power plant accidents. These waste estimates are generated as a function of user-defined decontamination strategies and are specific to a geographic location. This paper will describe the recently released version 3 update to WEST, and how differences in geography and urban footprints can impact the waste that is generated. (authors)

Research Organization:
WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
OSTI ID:
22838114
Report Number(s):
INIS-US-19-WM-16256; TRN: US19V1307083469
Resource Relation:
Conference: WM2016: 42. Annual Waste Management Symposium, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 6-10 Mar 2016; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs.; available online at: http://archive.wmsym.org/2016/index.html
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English