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Decommissioning and decontamination planning for Hanford nuclear facilities using multiattributed decision analysis

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6413388· OSTI ID:6413388

The 570-square mile Hanford Project contains facilities with varying degrees of radioactive contamination as a result of plutonium production operations. With the evolution of production requirements and technology, many of these have been retired and will be decommissioned and decontaminated (D and D). Because of the large number of facilities and high cost of decontamination strategies, a multiattributed decision model was used to develop individual facility D and D priorities. Each facility was treated as an alternative and four prioritization criterion were developed. Because this approach required approximately 2400 performance estimates (approx. 600 facilities on each of four criteria), computerized models were developed to determine these performance estimates utilizing a computer-based information system as the data base. The relative importance of each criterion was determined by experts from the Energy Research and Development Administration and the major Hanford contractors using a modified Delphi technique. The importance rankings (or weights) were combined with utility functions, also determined by the experts, to give an importance function that responded to the level of each criteria as well as to its overall intrinsic importance. The importance functions and the performance estimates of each facility on each criterion were combined in a prioritization model that determined a priority index for each facility. This index is an integral part of the overall decommissioning and decontamination plan.

Research Organization:
Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs., Richland, WA (USA)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
EY-76-C-06-1830
OSTI ID:
6413388
Report Number(s):
BNWL-SA-6007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English