Risk-based Cleanup for the DOE Complex: A Non-linear Programming Approach. David J. Bjornstad and Donald W. Jones, Joint Institute for Energy and Environment; and Kenneth S. Redus, SAIC, Oak Ridge, TN
This presentation explores an hypotheses with little basis in current practice, but great promise: Suppose DOE reoriented its cleanup of Cold War legacy wastes using risk management as a driver — How could this be done and how would the nature of the cleanup change?
To do this we draw upon data obtained from the current cleanup plans for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, from current cleanup costs, and from the current risk data base. Cleanup activities are aggregated into three types of waste (low-level radioactive, mixed radioactive, and transuranics) and into three process (storage, treatment, and disposal). Costs are summarized using Cobb-Douglas cost relationships that exhibit non-linearities. Three risk-related, alternative policy goals are developed.
This information is analyzed over a ten-year planning horizon using a non-linear programming model. The results indicate that very different cleanup directions would be followed under different goal structures that would lead, in turn, to very different cleanup programs. Ultimately, compliance-related constraints factor heavily in specific solutions.
The information produced by this analysis provides a quantitative estimate of how alternative goals would produce different time paths for risk reduction and how costs would respond. This information can also be interpreted as placing costs on "compliance" as a program driver. Whereas our results obtain from "synthesizing" data from a number of sources, and should not be used to "second-guess" current plans they do indicated the feasibility of conversion to a risk- based cleanup using currently available information.
This research has been sponsored in part by the Department of Energy, Office of Waste Management.
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