Development of a Waste Management Organization for the Whiteshell Laboratories Closure Project - 18317
- Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (Canada)
- Atkins Nuclear Secured (Canada)
Whiteshell Laboratories (WL) has been generating and managing radioactive waste for over fifty years in support of a wide variety of research and operational applications. The current mission of the WL site, located in Manitoba, Canada, is to fully decommission the site to an approved end-state criterion and to disposition the waste in compliance with national and provincial regulations. To expedite the decommissioning schedule from over thirty years to nine years, which was a contractual commitment for the site operating company, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), it became apparent that a centralized and optimized organization be established to coordinate all waste management activities and to fulfill the mission to process, condition, transport and disposition all radioactive wastes, which include Low-Level Waste (LLW), Intermediate-Level Waste (ILW) and High-Level Waste (HLW). The WL Waste Management Division was effectively established as a two-person operation in 2016 and has rapidly expanded to fulfill the mandate of managing nearly 30,000 cubic meters of LLW, ILW and HLW. This paper outlines the early lessons learned from managing important organizational changes without disrupting ongoing work practices; developing executive-level waste management strategies based on options studies and cost-benefit analysis comparisons; selection of storage vs. disposal disposition strategies; evaluation and selection of transportation methods and packages for LLW, ILW and HLW; and the need to develop an entire suite of programmatic documentation and procedures to support and instill a strong conduct of operations culture. The waste management strategy, which now focuses on transporting the waste to another province (Ontario) in a disposal ready form, represents the first large-scale radioactive waste transportation campaign in Canada that includes all three classes of waste. This paper provides additional insight on the overall waste management strategies for the WL Closure Project. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22975459
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-20-WM-18317; TRN: US21V0273015501
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2018: 44. Annual Waste Management Conference, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 18-22 Mar 2018; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs.; Available online at: https://www.xcdsystem.com/wmsym/2018/index.html
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COMPLIANCE
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
DECOMMISSIONING
DOCUMENTATION
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
MANITOBA
ONTARIO
OPERATION
PLANNING
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
REGULATIONS
WASTE TRANSPORTATION
WNRE