Recent Progress in DOE Waste Tank Closure
- Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC (United States)
- Consultant, Marion NC (United States)
The US DOE complex currently has over 330 underground storage tanks that have been used to process and store radioactive waste generated from the production of weapons materials. These tanks contain over 380 million liters of high-level and low-level radioactive waste. The waste consists of radioactively contaminated sludge, supernate, salt cake or calcine. Most of the waste exists at four US DOE locations, the Hanford Site, the Savannah River Site, the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center and the West Valley Demonstration Project. A summary of the DOE tank closure activities was first issued in 2001. Since then, regulatory changes have taken place that affect some of the sites and considerable progress has been made in closing tanks. This paper presents an overview of the current regulatory changes and drivers and a summary of the progress in tank closures at the various sites over the intervening six years. A number of areas are addressed including closure strategies, characterization of bulk waste and residual heel material, waste removal technologies for bulk waste, heel residuals and annuli, tank fill materials, closure system modeling and performance assessment programs, lessons learned, and external reviews. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9 - 332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21323123
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-10-WM-08396; TRN: US10V0588064314
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM'08: Waste Management Symposium 2008 - HLW, TRU, LLW/ILW, Mixed, Hazardous Wastes and Environmental Management - Phoenix Rising: Moving Forward in Waste Management, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 24-28 Feb 2008; Other Information: Country of input: France; 33 refs
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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