Adequacy of Information Collected During Waste Site Remediation for Long Term Stewardship at Hanford, a Former Nuclear Weapons Production Site for the U.S. Department of Energy. W. C. Griffith and E. M. Faustman, University of Washington
Long term stewardship for former Department of Energy nuclear weapons production sites will in many cases require long term post remediation monitoring for contaminants remaining at the sites, and comparison to a variety of risk criteria. This will require detailed information about the location and type of contaminants, physical and biological characteristics of the site, and likely biological receptors at the sites. This report examines how contaminants are characterized for several Hanford waste sites along the Columbia River during their remediation, and how this information is used to judge whether the sites satisfy risk criteria for contaminants that remain at the site. At Hanford this is a multi-step process, based on CERCLA, during which many types of risk are eliminated from consideration during early steps, before detailed characterization of contaminants are available. This process is carried out at Hanford for a large number of individual waste sites with over 500 of these sites along the Columbia River. At present it is not clear how these individual sites will be integrated into the overall assessment necessary for long term stewardship, or how risks eliminated from consideration in the early steps will be evaluated using the detailed characterization information. The present regulatory framework at Hanford known as the Tri Party Agreement stipulates that the remediation should be effective for 1,000 years. The integration of information about the multiple waste sites and the evaluation of multiple types of risks are critical to formulation of an effective monitoring and surveillance plan for long term stewardship to demonstrate that will ensure this remediation goal is being met.
This work was performed with support of U.S. Department of Energy, under Award No. DE-FG26 00NT40938. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the DOE.
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