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The Hanford Site (also known as the Hanford Reservation) occupies approximately 1,450 km2 (560 square miles) along the Columbia River in south-central Washington, north of the city of Richland. The site was established by the federal government in 1943 to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Currently, the mission of the site, under the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is management of wastes generated by the weapons program and remediation of the environment contaminated by that waste. As part of that mission, DOE and the State of Washington Department of Ecology prepared the Hanford Site Tank Waste Remediation System Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The Hanford Tanks is a general review of the DEIS. Its findings and recommendations are the subject of this report. Selection of a disposition plan for these wastes is a decision of national importance, involving potential environmental and health risks, technical challenges, and costs of tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. The last comprehensive analysis of these issues was completed 10 years ago, and several major changes in plans have occurred since. Therefore, the current reevaluation is timely and prudent. This report endorses the decision to prepare this new environmental impact statement, and in particular the decision to evaluate a wide range of alternatives not restricted to those encouraged by current regulatory policies.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has established the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) to safely manage an dispose of the Hanford Site tank waste. Pretreatment is one of the major program elements of the TWRS. The scope of the TWRS Tank Waste Pretreatment Program is to treat tank waste to separate it into high- and low-level waste fractions and to provide additional treatment as required to feed low-level waste fractions and to provide additional treatment as required to feed low-level and high-level waste immobilization processes. The Pretreatment Program activities include technology development, design, fabrication, construction, and operation of facilities to support the pretreatment of radioactive mixed waste retrieved from 28 large underground double-shell tanks and 149 single-shell tanks.
The Hanford Site, located in southeastern Washington State, is operated by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractors. Starting in 1943, Hanford supported fabrication of reactor fuel elements, operation of production reactors, processing of irradiated fuel to separate and extract plutonium and uranium, and preparation of plutonium metal. Processes used to recover plutonium and uranium from irradiated fuel and to recover radionuclides from tank waste, plus miscellaneous sources resulted in the legacy of approximately 227,000 m3 (60 million gallons) of high-level radioactive waste, currently in storage. This waste is currently stored in 177 large underground storage tanks, 28 of which have two steel walls and are called double-shell tanks (DSTs) an 149 of which are called single-shell tanks (SSTs). Much of the high-heat-emitting nuclides (strontium-90 and cesium-137) has been extracted from the tank waste, converted to solid, and placed in capsules, most of which are stored onsite in water-filled basins. DOE established the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) program in 1991. The TWRS program mission is to store, treat, immobilize and dispose, or prepare for disposal, the Hanford tank waste in an environmentally sound, safe, and cost-effective manner. Technology will need to be developed or improved to meet the TWRS program mission. The Integrated Technology Plan (ITP) is the high-level consensus plan that documents all TWRS technology activities for the life of the program.
The research and development of new technology in support of the tank waste remediation system (TWRS) program at Hanford is largely driven by the unique situation with the Hanford radioactive tank wastes. The operational history at Hanford has involved three different major processes and several major campaigns to recover fission products from the wastes, and has not maintained a segregation of the high-level wastes. The result is a very diverse inventory with very high content of solids of many different chemical constituents and great complexity. The R & D program must not only assure that an acceptable strategy for remediation of these wastes can be put in place, it must also define ways of improving the cost effectiveness of the strategy to make the mammoth task more tractable.
The primary purpose of systems engineering is to organize information and knowledge to assist those who manage, direct, and control the planning, development, production, and operation of the systems necessary to accomplish a given mission. However, this purpose can be compromised or defeated if information production and organization becomes an end unto itself. Systems engineering was developed to help resolve the engineering problems that are encountered when attempting to develop and implement large and complex engineering projects. It depends upon integrated program planning and development, disciplined and consistent allocation and control of design and development requirements and functions, and systems analysis. The key thesis of this report is that proper application of systems analysis and systems engineering will improve the management of tank wastes at the Hanford Site significantly, thereby leading to reduced life cycle costs for remediation and more effective risk reduction. The committee recognizes that evidence for cost savings from application of systems engineering has not been demonstrated yet.
The Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) mission is to store, treat, and immobilize highly radioactive Hanford waste (current and future tank waste and the strontium and cesium capsules) in an environmentally sound, safe, and cost-effective manner (DOE 1993). This operational scenario is a description of the facilities that are necessary to remediate the Hanford Site tank wastes. The TWRS Program is developing technologies, conducting engineering analyses, and preparing for design and construction of facilities necessary to remediate the Hanford Site tank wastes. An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is being prepared to evaluate proposed actions of the TWRS. This operational scenario is only one of many plausible scenarios that would result from the completion of TWRS technology development, engineering analyses, design and construction activities and the TWRS EIS. This operational scenario will be updated as the development of the TWRS proceeds and will be used as a benchmark by which to evaluate alternative scenarios.