Review of the Department of Energy's Plans for Disposal of Surplus Plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (2020) / Chapter Skim
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2 Background
2 Background
Pages 16-41
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From page 16... ...
. The plutonium material within the surplus inventory is in many forms ranging from plutonium pits and oxides to plutonium within the Department of Energy (DOE)
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From page 17... ...
A significant portion of the U.S. declared surplus plutonium inventory is in the form of pits; other forms include spent reactor fuel from plutonium production reactors, scraps and residues from pit production, and plutonium metals and oxide stocks not made into pits.
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From page 18... ...
. The remainder, 42.2 MT consisting of plutonium pits, metals, and oxides, is under consideration by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration for dispositioning as DSP-TRU waste in WIPP (34 MT + 7.1 MT + 1.1 MT, red)
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From page 19... ...
by Sandia National Laboratories uses 42.2 MT for the possible emplacement of DSP-TRU waste by DOE-NNSA. This special inventory report did not include the 6 MT of DOE-EM surplus non-pit plutonium material (LANL, 2017)
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From page 20... ...
The ROD states that the surplus non-pit plutonium material "will be prepared and packaged to meet the WIPP waste acceptance criteria for contact-handled TRU waste and other applicable regulatory requirements" and would be disposed of "at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, a geologic repository for disposal of transuranic (TRU)
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From page 21... ...
immobilization … and … MOX fuel. The Department has selected the Savannah River Site in South Carolina as the location for all three disposition facilities." 2000 The United States and the Russian Federation sign the PMDA (DOS, 2000)
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From page 22... ...
19591) Decision to disposition of 6 MT surplus non-pit plutonium through dilute and dispose at WIPP: "Blending for disposal at WIPP is a proven process that is ongoing at SRS for disposition of plutonium material…." 2017 NDAA for FY2018f and Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018g Waivers allow for the Secretary of Energy to cease construction of the MOX facility if an alternative to dispositioning surplus plutonium at the cost of less than half the cost of the MOX option can be identified.
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From page 23... ...
However, the Russian Federation government is aware of DOE's desire to use dilute and dispose to disposition 34 MT of surplus plutonium. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin raised concerns in an April 2016 meeting with journalists about the United States' use of the dilute and dispose process for dispositioning surplus plutonium under the PMDA: [B]
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From page 24... ...
Program scope includes incremental funding to process a portion of the non-pit plutonium materials associated with the 34 MT nuclear nonproliferation objective and incremental funding to add monitoring equipment required to implement verification protocol using an international agency for the dilute and dispose process of non-pit plutonium.
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From page 25... ...
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act (LWA) limits TRU waste disposal capacity to no greater than 6,200,000 ft3 (175,564 m3)
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From page 26... ...
Review of DOE's Plans for Disposal of Surplus Plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant FIGURE 2-2 Map of New Mexico indicating the location of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. SOURCE: Sewards et al., 1991, fig.
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From page 27... ...
The 10 underground panels are shown in gray (for emplaced waste) , red (for prohibited access)
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From page 28... ...
. 18 Because some waste destined for WIPP also contains hazardous waste constituents (all waste at WIPP is 16 From the National Transuranic web page: "Changes in NTP oversight and at WIPP established new requirements pertaining to WIPP WAC compliance and in the WIPP Documented Safety Analysis (DSA)
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From page 29... ...
. The physical volume of the TRU waste containers is still required to be reported against the RCRA TRU mixed waste (TMW)
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From page 30... ...
Inner dimension N/A 12-inch-diameter pipe 6-inch-diameter pipe Physical volume 0.21 m3 0.21 m3 0.21 m3 Inner container volume 0.21 m3 0.046 m3 0.013 m3 BOX FIGURE 1 Graphical illustration of the three types of 55-gallon drums approved for disposal of TRU waste at WIPP with information on the physical volumes (outer container volume) and inner container volumes affected by the volume of record decision.
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From page 31... ...
An orange line indicates the Lower Avalon Shale formation, and the maroon line indicates the Upper Avalon Shale formation. A green star (latitude 32.37, longitude 103.79)
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From page 32... ...
The 1996 National Research Council report The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: A Potential Solution for the Disposal of Transuranic Waste states that EPA's 40 CFR Part 191 "is unique in that, in addition to regulations based on radiation dose, repository compliance also is based on calculations of release fractions of selected radionuclides" (NRC, 1996, p. 16, emphasis added)
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From page 33... ...
. For a repository such as WIPP, which is designed for disposal of TRU wastes, EPA has established in 40 CFR Part 191 that 1,000 MTHM is equivalent to 1,000,000 Ci of TRU wastes with greater than 20-year half-lives (note that 1 MT of plutonium-239 contains approximately 63,000 Ci; see Box 2-1)
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From page 34... ...
. See, for example, "Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Documented Safety Analysis, Revision 6a" or "Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Technical Safety Requirements, Revision 6a" (Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC, 2018a,b)
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From page 35... ...
. BOX 2-5 The New Mexico Environment Department's Approval of Permit Modification Requests for WIPP The State of New Mexico, through NMED, regulates the hazardous waste at WIPP (all waste received at WIPP is managed as hazardous)
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From page 36... ...
2. DNFSB's staff concluded that the variability in MAR per room is not random statistical variation and suggested that bias associated with individual waste transfer campaigns from different sources contributed to the variation, calling into question the conservatism of the statistical MAR methodology.b The committee notes that this "transfer campaign bias" could be aggravated with the addition of a single waste stream of more than 160,000 containers of DSP-TRU waste over a 30-year campaign, exacerbating concerns over the lack of conservatism in MAR methodology.
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From page 37... ...
. In the context of the 10,000-year regulatory containment requirement, note that the half-life of plutonium-239, a major component of the DSP-TRU waste inventory, is 24,110 years.
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From page 38... ...
" and "focuses on all TRU waste stored or projected to be generated through CY 2033 at the TRU waste generator sites in order to reflect the WIPP facility closure date for the CRA-2019 deferred PA" (DOE-CBFO, 2018a, p.
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From page 39... ...
. FIGURE 2-6 Evolution of emplaced waste and salt creep in WIPP for emplaced TRU waste packages, simulation of 0, 10-15, and 1,000 years (Hansen, 2009)
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From page 40... ...
For example, when DOE-NNSA was considering the MOX fuel option, it used a level 3 PRA to compare the human health consequences of design-basis and beyond-design-basis accidents with normal nuclear fuel and a combination of MOX and normal uranium fuel (DOE, 2015c, Appendix J)
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From page 41... ...
As discussed above, the dilute and dispose project has international implications for the surplus plutonium management as well as political, legal, and social challenges for the states and local governments that are origination and destination points for the plutonium (such as New Mexico, where the DSP-TRU waste will be disposed, and South Carolina, where it will be processed)
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