Best Practices for Risk-Informed Decision Making Regarding Contaminated Sites Summary of a Workshop Series (2014) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 9-22
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distributed to the workshop participants and is intended to provide the reader with background information regarding regulatory history and status of environmental cleanup of nuclear legacy sites, relevant National Research Council (NRC) reports, and sustainability frameworks.
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. Because U-235 occurs in less than 1 percent of natural uranium, which itself occurs in concentrations of 2 to 5 parts per million in mined ore, Bohr expressed deep doubt that a nuclear bomb could be made "unless you turn the United States into one huge factory" (DOE 1995, p.
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In some cases, population densities increased to support the operations at the facilities (e.g., Hanford, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos) ; in other cases, they increased because of expansion of FIGURE 1-1 A schematic illustration of historical waste management practices in the DOE nuclear industrial complex and contaminant pathways to the environment.
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in 1989, the diversity and magnitude of the wastes and contamination have become well known, including approximately 88 million gallons of radioactive wastes stored in tanks, 1,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, more than 10,000 containers of plutonium and uranium, more than 5,000 contaminated facilities, millions of cubic meters of contaminated soil, and 1 billion gallons of contaminated ground water (DOE 2013)
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Many of the 90 completed sites have wastes remaining on site and restrictions on future use; these sites require long-term monitoring to ensure that the existing remedies continue to protect human health and the environment. When wastes remain on a site, CERCLA requires 5-year reviews to provide an opportunity to evaluate the implementation and performance of a remedy to determine whether it remains protective of human health and the environment.
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Other long-term monitoring activities include institutional controls, which are non-engineered instruments, such as administrative and legal controls, that help minimize the potential for human exposure to contamination and/or protect the integrity of the remedy. Although the majority of DOE sites have completed cleanup, the largest and most technically challenging sites remain.
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The most difficult issues remaining are soil and groundwater contamination. The NRC report Groundwater and Soil Cleanup: Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants provides an overview of the existing technologies and their limitations in this area (1999, pp.
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. Although cleanup strategies for complex multi-contaminant sites remain site specific, the incorporation of sustainability principles at ongoing DOE sites, such as Hanford or Savannah River, could help move cleanup strategies forward in a way that addresses ongoing social, economic, and environmental concerns.
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. The report states that the framework incorporates and goes beyond an approach based on assessing and managing the risks posed by pollutants that has largely shaped environmental policy since the 1980s.
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18 FIGURE 1-3 A framework for EPA sustainability decision making.
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The report also stated that EPA could benefit from formally developing, adopting, and publishing a set of broad "Sustainability Principles" that underlie all agency policies and programs. These principles would guide the agency's implementation of regulatory mandates and discretionary programs in ways that optimize benefits as they relate to the social, environmental, and economic pillars.
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SURF describes sustainable remediation as "balancing the impacts and influences of the triple bottom line of sustainability (i.e., environmental, societal, and economic) while protecting human health and the environment." Over the past few years, remediation practitioners have incorporated sustainability parameters more frequently during remedy selection and implementation; however, methodologies have been inconsistent, partly because of a lack of a broad, widely applicable sustainable remediation framework.
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If needed, practitioners can identify and implement additional sustainability opportunities during this phase. Operation and During this phase, remediation practitioners should assess Maintenance opportunities for continual sustainability improvement of the system as site conditioners change and remediation technologies advance.
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The framework can complement and build upon existing sustainable remediation programs developed by government agencies, industry associations, and the regulated communities. The framework allows for goal-oriented outcomes but also introduces additional opportunities for incorporating sustainability parameters throughout the remediation project.
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