Containing the Cold War Mess

Chapter 5:
IEER's Recommendations for Restructuring the Environmental Management of the Nuclear Weapons Complex

The nuclear arms race and its aftermath have created the largest and most complex problem of environmental remediation and waste management in U.S. history. The problem is so complicated and costly that there is a tendency in the nuclear establishment to simply bury the problem, literally and figuratively, creating what have been called national sacrifice zones. That would not only be unjust to the communities that have already borne an enormous burden of contamination, cover-ups, and worse at the hands of the nuclear weapons establishment during the Cold War. It would also be dangerous, regrettable, and unnecessary.

It would be dangerous because by its very nature long-lived radioactive and toxic contamination cannot be confined by a fence. It will spread and contaminate vital resources that will be important to the well-being of future generations. People around the country eat the potatoes that are grown with water from the Snake River Plain Aquifer which extends under the Idaho weapons lab, the vegetables that are grown with water from the Tuscaloosa aquifer underlying the Savannah River Site, and the fish that come from the waters of the Columbia River. Institutional memory is short and, if the past is any guide, people in the future may use contaminated resources for some time and make investments before they discover the contamination. They will then be faced with wrenching decisions of whether to abandon their investments or live with what would normally be unacceptable risks, or pursue remediation that in many cases may be far more costly than the original remediation and waste management "solutions."

It would be regrettable and unnecessary because the basic approach to a solution is at hand, even if all the technologies are not. In the next two to three decades, we can eliminate or greatly reduce the most urgent threats, while pursuing technologies and long-term waste management strategies to minimize risk to generations far into the future.

It is to be expected that there will be failures and mistakes along the way to solving this daunting problem. But these must be distinguished from the kind of short-sightedness and mismanagement that presently plague the Department of Energy's Environmental Management program. The long tradition of devotion to nuclear weapons production at the expense of health and the environment seems to have stuck to DOE.

The case studies we have presented in this report, along with other work done by IEER on radioactive waste management, have lead us conclude that, overall, the Department of Energy's Environmental Management plan is faced with problems that are so fundamental that only a thorough restructuring can cure them. Under the current approach, not only are huge sums of money being wasted, but major programs are failing without lessons being learned. Cold War technologies that create more dangerous waste, like reprocessing, are being pursued in the name of Environmental Management. Short-sighted and ill-designed remediation programs are being implemented that are on the course to becoming even larger environmental problems in the future. Even much basic data is of appallingly poor quality, with numbers jumping around from one year to the next and one report to the next without explanation, coordination, quality control, or scientific review process.

We have come to these dismal conclusions about DOE's programs despite having observed that there are many competent professionals in the DOE system (including its contractors). Some good pieces of work have been done, as we note in Chapter 1. There is also widespread and deep support in the country for a clean environment, and the communities that are near DOE facilities are no exception. These elements can be a part of the foundation of a sound environmental management program. But they are not enough. Institutional and technical changes will also be needed, as we discuss below.

A restructured program must also begin with a thorough reassessment of environmental remediation and waste management programs taken together. We are presenting what is essentially an outline of an approach for environmental management that has resulted from our preliminary and admittedly partial assessment. We also discuss below the specifics that we have been able to derive from our case studies and previous work on the DOE complex, as our contribution to that restructuring.

The starting point for examination of the options for dealing with the radioactive legacy of nuclear weapons production is that we cannot "clean it up" in the conventional sense of the phrase. Rather, the objective is reduction of risk, which has three aspects.

The first aspect relates to urgent problems. These risks are immediate and failure to take action could result in environmental or health disasters, or further spread of contamination so that it is irremediable, or both. Examples are the risk of waste tank fires or explosions and the migration of plutonium, cesium-137, and other long-lived radionuclides from waste dumps into groundwater.

The second aspect involves long-term risk reduction. This means that we must devise ways to isolate or contain radioactive waste for periods comparable to the times for which they will remain dangerous. Many of the scientific and engineering judgments we make in the next few decades must hold up for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

The third aspect involves non-radioactive toxic substances. Some of these, like organic compounds, can be rendered relatively less harmless by chemical treatment. Others, like heavy metals, must be isolated from the environment. Finally, some materials may be uncontaminated and could be reused.

In sum, the popular term "clean-up" really involves removing dangerous materials from places and resources that human beings may use ("the human environment") and devising treatment strategies for chemical waste and isolation strategies for radioactive waste to minimize risk to future generations. All of this must be done in ways that also keep exposure of workers and present-day populations to low levels.

General Programmatic Recommendations¹

1. Create a new, rational, environmentally-protective system of radioactive waste classification according to longevity and specific activity, so that comparable hazards are managed comparably.

2. Coordinate waste management and environmental remediation and make reduction of short-term risks compatible with minimizing long-term risks.

3. Approach environmental management with independently enforced, national health-based clean-up and waste management standards, including specific provisions to protect groundwater resources and mandatory guidelines to keep doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) both for workers and for off-site populations. The ALARA guideline for release of sites for unrestricted use should be to remediate to background levels, if reasonable, or else to keep doses to under 2 millirem per year (which is the British ALARA guideline).

4. Put an institutional structure into place that is both scientifically and financially accountable and that demonstrably has as its top priority the protection of health and environment, rather than weapons production or perpetuation of Cold War technologies.

5. Suspend the politically expedient Yucca Mountain and WIPP repository programs and put in place a scientifically sound program of long-term high-level waste management, including repository research, sub-seabed disposal research, and construction of materials to contain radioactivity that are analogous to natural materials that can last for millions of years. (See Appendix B for more details on IEER's waste management recommendations.)

6. Provide funds and technical support to communities that have residual contamination so that they can monitor the environment and keep themselves informed. Such funds are needed to protect communities against future known risks and also against risks due to inadequate characterization or present incomplete understanding of risks. The size of the fund should depend on the size and character of the residual radioactive and non-radioactive hazardous contamination of land, remaining structures, surface waters, river beds, and groundwater, as well as the total amount of radioactivity and non-radioactive hazardous material left in disposal areas on site.

7. Create a rigorous, open, and truly independent procedure for evaluating successes and failures. This process should include an integrated technology evaluation program that can assess successes and failures as well as judge new technologies for their relevance to the DOE complex.

8. Manage non-radioactive toxic components of waste in ways that do not seriously compromise management of radioactive components.

9. Make risk reduction for off-site residents and for workers compatible with minimizing risk for future generations.

10. Stabilize waste so as to greatly reduce or eliminate the most serious environmental and health threats and store it on-site while sound long-term management strategies are developed.

11. If sound remediation technologies are not available, take interim measures (such as restricting access to resources), make investments in research and development, and create rules that allow for a future progressive return of resources to general use.

12. Provide the states, Indian tribes, and the public (with special emphasis on the affected communities and workers) with timely information so that they can participate effectively in decision-making.

13. Make public all information relating to health and environment that was created at taxpayer expense, including that produced and/or held by contractors and sub-contractors.

14. Impose stringent financial accountability on the contractors and institute engineering-based methods to review project budgets and large budget increases. One method to accomplish this review on an ongoing basis would be for DOE to create a permanent panel under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, composed of people who do not have financial conflicts of interest with specific projects. Project budget documents should be public. This panel should also have the power to appoint ad hoc staff and committees to look into specific areas and problems.

15. Allow state, local governments, and Indian tribes to apply stricter clean-up standards.

1. Waste Classification

The restructuring of waste management and waste classification is essential to putting into place an environmental remediation program in which the urgent problems of preventing increases in contamination and reducing severe safety and security risks can be made a top priority, without resort to measures such as shallow land burial of radioactive waste that has substantial concentrations of long-lived radionuclides.

The current waste classification system is not rational in that some highly radioactive waste is treated as "low-level" waste, while others are designated for repository burial. Appendix B covers this issue in some detail and presents IEER's technical and policy guidelines for waste reclassification. In the specific instance of "low-level" waste, the classification system created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was not meant to deal with tens of millions of curies of long-lived fission products or million-gallon high-level waste tanks that DOE is planning to put into shallow land disposal sites. For example, the total amount of Class B and Class C waste expected to arise from decommissioning all US commercial nuclear reactors is about 30,000 cubic meters, of which only about 3,000 cubic meters would be Class C waste. DOE plans to create more than 100 times this amount of Class C waste from the Hanford tanks waste processing alone, all to be disposed of on one site -- Hanford. Such a use of the "low-level" waste category is highly inappropriate.

Moreover, as we discuss in more detail in Appendix B, even the NRC regulations themselves are deeply flawed and should be revised. U.S. Class C waste is far more radioactive than waste that, in countries such as Sweden, France, and Britain, is intended for deep geologic disposal.² DOE's 350,000 cubic meters of Class C "low-level" generated from Hanford tank processing could contain up to 7,000 curies per cubic meter of strontium-90 or 4,600 curies per cubic meter of cesium-137. (Under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's definition, the limits are proportionately lower if the waste contains more than one radionuclide.) French regulations define intermediate level waste to be disposed of in a repository as containing more than 10 curies per ton of beta or gamma emitters (such as strontium-90 or cesium-137). If the material is glass, this translates to 27 curies per cubic meter. British "intermediate-level" waste to be disposed of in a repository contains greater than 0.324 curies per cubic meter.³

There are also instances of inappropriate use of the "low-level waste" designation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which allows under some circumstances for depleted uranium to be designated as Class A "low-level" waste, when in fact it possesses characteristics similar to transuranic waste. (See Appendix B.)

Finally, we have also illustrated the problem arising from the arbitrary and varying definition of TRU waste and the resultant tortuous efforts to separate "low-level" waste from TRU waste at considerable cost, even as contamination of groundwater increases and spreads. Not only are there inconsistencies in the internal DOE definitions of waste over time, but there are also inconsistencies between DOE and NRC designations for the TRU waste category (which under NRC rules belongs to the "Greater than Class C" waste classification). DOE regulations are far more lax than NRC regulations because they do not simultaneously restrict fission products and transuranic elements in TRU waste.

The U.S. waste classification needs to be revised so as to correspond to longevity and hazard of the waste. We suggest a specific classification scheme in Appendix B.

2. Coordinate Waste Management and Environmental Remediation

Environmental remediation efforts must keep one eye on minimizing current risks and keep the other steadily fixed on long term waste management. Unless remediation actions taken are compatible with sound long-term waste management, they may simply lay the basis for future problems. Decommissioning of highly contaminated facilities, long-term protection of groundwater from reckless dumping practices of the past, and solidification of highly radioactive waste will all result in substantial volumes of long-lived radioactive waste. (These processes do not create new radioactivity, but put existing radioactivity in new forms to be managed with the objective of risk reduction.)

Remediation actions that aim at short-term risk reduction are required to be compatible with keeping risks low from long-term waste management. But DOE has not systematized this simple principle. For instance, at Fernald, DOE could have built tornado-proof enclosure for the silos containing radium-contaminated waste, and taken a more careful approach to emptying the tanks and putting them into a waste form suitable for long-term management. Instead DOE took the cheaper route of putting a bentonite clay layer to reduce radon emissions. This short-term solution is already failing, and it has complicated efforts to retrieve the waste from the silos to process them into a form more suitable for long-term management.

As another example, DOE has not coordinated the treatment of its buried transuranic waste with the planned treatment of its stored transuranic waste in the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Facility, though these wastes have similar characteristics. One reason appears to be that retrievably stored waste is part of the Waste Management program, while buried TRU waste is part of the environmental remediation program.

The location and types of repositories, the kinds of waste forms, the technologies and steps used to stabilize waste are all connected issues. DOE's failure to integrate them has in part been responsible for high costs and inadequate results. At least some parts of the DOE appear to recognize this failing and DOE has initiated an effort toward such integration. It is too early to conclude how this effort will be reflected in real programs, and whether other efforts such as "privatization" will overwhelm them.

Careful coordination of environmental remediation and waste management and short-term and long-term risk reduction are essential to a successful management program and it should be a principal goal of the program integration effort to achieve that coordination.

3. Clean-up Standards

DOE should reverse its decision to oppose EPA efforts to set clean-up and waste management standards and instead cooperate in the setting of stringent standards to which it can be held accountable by the public and to which it can hold its contractors accountable. We suggest that a single framework for environmental remediation and waste management would consist of the following technical elements, among others (see Appendix A), when sites are released for unrestricted use:

• a set of remediation standards that apply nationally and that include protection for health of future generations as well as for resources, notably water resources

• the "as low as reasonably achievable" (ALARA) guide for release of sites for unrestricted use should be to remediate to background levels, if reasonable, or else to keep doses to under 2 millirem per year (which is the British ALARA guideline)

• a remediation standard involving a maximum dose of 10 millirem to a future maximally exposed individual (often the subsistence farmer) for as long as the threat persists and sublimits for protection of groundwater as per the Clean Water Act regulations

• systematic consideration of non-cancer risks and synergisms between risks from radioactive and non-radioactive toxic materials.

In order to implement the protection of groundwater provisions, models need to be revised to reflect experience at the sites, particularly with respect to mobility of transuranic elements. Examples of faulty assumptions in this area are detailed in Chapter Two of this report.

The same guidelines and rules should be followed when sites are released for restricted uses. The main difference between restricted and unrestricted uses should stem from the fact that under restricted use, dose can be limited by institutional and technical means not available in the unrestricted case, in addition to remediation measures that would be implemented.

Within the context of a restructured environmental remediation program, it will also be possible to more realistically address two other needs. First, it is necessary to have a good deal of flexibility in the environmental remediation program to meet complex, unprecedented, and technologically difficult challenges. But this is not possible under the present structure because DOE tends to subvert flexibility it is given to expedient ends rather than to long-term environmental protection. This political expediency is also abetted by pressure from the weapons-makers, from the commercial nuclear power industry (in the case of the Yucca Mountain repository), and from other parts and branches of government. Given that, those whose interests coincide most with environmental remediation, such as the states, communities near the plants, or the Environmental Protection Agency, have often tended to tighten rules and reduce flexibility. The needed flexibility cannot be restored until a sounder institutional structure is achieved.

Second, the risks from some non-radioactive toxics, notably organic materials, can be reduced. But this often requires technologies that will impose some risk to the present generation. Implementing such approaches to overall risk reduction requires a great deal of trust between the implementing agency, the workers who will implement it, and the communities who are near the facilities. Specifically, there must be a shared confidence that the implementing institutions (today, the DOE and its contractors) will put public health and environment first. It requires great openness to input from all quarters and a seriousness of taking that input into account (and not just when it is convenient). The DOE and its contractors do not inspire the requisite confidence (to say the least) because of past abuse of the public trust and continuing resort to political expediency and Cold War technologies. Therefore, an appropriate technical program of risk reduction cannot be implemented without an institutional restructuring of environmental remediation and waste management, to which we now turn.

4. Institutional Structure

We have concluded that the most important problems preventing the creation of a sound program of environmental remediation as well as short- and long-term waste management are not technical but institutional. These problems lie in the Department of Energy and its contractors. Despite some progress, especially in the area of delineating the problems that face the nuclear weapons complex (see Chapter 1), and despite the presence of many scientifically-competent people, the environmental remediation program has yet to find a direction where programs are well-conceived and properly implemented. The principal institutional problems that we have identified are:

• an attachment to Cold War technologies related to weapons research, development, testing, and production

• a tendency to "monumentalism" -- that is, rushing into big projects without proper preparatory scientific and engineering work (perhaps deriving from a desire to maximize the flow of funds into the weapons complex)

• a lack of a sound process of internal scientific and technical peer review that actually matters in decision-making in approving and implementing large projects, and a corresponding tendency to ignore inconvenient extra-departmental advice

• a tendency to approve large budget increases for contractors without thorough engineering based-reviews of the failures that led to the budget changes

• a failure to learn lessons from past failures

• an attachment to the Yucca Mountain and Waste Isolation Pilot Project repository programs out of institutional, legal, and financial inertia even though these are compromising a much larger effort to remediate the weapons complex, manage long-lived highly-radioactive waste, and develop a scientifically sound repository program

• a lack of independent regulation of the DOE's nuclear activities.

Fundamentally compounding all of the problems is a simple underlying fact: DOE, because of its mismanagement of waste and its low priority for environmental protection has lost the trust of the communities it must deal with ("stakeholders" in official jargon). DOE seems generally ready to claim in any specific instance that "no one was hurt" even before the management is in possession of the relevant facts.

Institutional reform must specifically address DOE's tendency to jump into projects at scales that are too large, only to see them fail or be seriously compromised in quality. Solid experimental work, careful problem characterization, engineering evaluations, frank analyses of successes and failures, and pilot projects all need to be made part of the establishment of sound science and engineering practices in the DOE environmental restoration and waste management program. There is no easy way to accomplish this goal. But without it, the taxpayers will continue to spend five billion or more dollars a year to little purpose other than to maintain the capability to restart portions of the nuclear weapons complex, for example the Fast Flux Test Facility at Hanford, by guarding buildings and materials and to increase the flow of tax dollars into the bank accounts of DOE contractors.

Nor do we have the option of simply abandoning the DOE complex. Even putting aside environmental considerations, security issues, such as large quantities of plutonium in waste and in shut-down facilities, and the continuing dangers of fires and explosions, such as the one that occurred in the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant in May 1997, will necessitate several billion dollars every year. Therefore, the question is not whether spending taxpayer dollars can be avoided. It cannot. That is part of the cost and the legacy of the Cold War. The question is how the spending of it shall be effectively organized so as to achieve health, environmental and security goals for this and future generations.

One of the main obstacles confronting institutional reform is that the same people who are now mismanaging the environmental programs may wind up also being the managers of any new structure. In other words, we should ensure that institutional reform amounts to more than changing nameplates and letterheads. Moreover, the institutional memory of long-standing workers (including scientists, engineers, and technicians) is needed to address many issues, since documentation is often poor or non-existent. This problem should be overcome by making sure that the decision-making authority is shifted to those who do not have a personal interest in justifying or perpetuating the actions taken during the Cold War.

There are two levels of institutional reform needed. First, there are a number of measures that DOE can take to ensure that projects are properly conceived and implemented, and that lessons are learned throughout the weapons complex when projects fail. The second, far more difficult, is to create a new institutional framework that will detach remediation and waste management at closed sites (as well as long-term waste management) from the weapons culture that still permeates much of DOE.

a. Reforms within DOE

DOE should create an internal technical and financial project review structure for large projects as well as for smaller projects that may have application throughout the weapons complex. DOE could build on the model of the Technical Advisory Panel for Hanford tanks, which helped diagnose and create a remediation plan for reducing the risk of a hydrogen explosion in tank SY-101 and examined a number of other urgent issues relating to risk of fires and explosions. The features of this model should be strongly independent, empowered with adequate authority and responsibility, and composed of a relatively small number of highly-competent and publicly-accountable personnel to ensure responsiveness and rigor. DOE should also create a standing advisory committee, under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, to review projects from early stages through implementation both as regards their technical aspects and the reasonableness of budgets from an engineering standpoint. The majority of members on this committee should be free of conflicts of interest with regard to contracting with DOE or its contractors.

DOE should also reinstate the practice of issuing annual Baseline Environmental Management Reports, and make them more complete. Specifically, DOE should include all sites, whether closed or operational, in this report. This would also be a good place to start to institute an internal peer review of the budgeting of environmental management projects and to make engineering-based estimation a standard part of the estimation of project costs.

b. Overall institutional reform of remediation and waste management

We do not have a definitive recommendation to offer on institutional reform, but alternatives for consideration, outlined below, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, as a starting point for intensive public debate. Our principal recommendation is that President Clinton appoint an independent commission on Institutional Reform of Environmental Remediation and Waste Management under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to hold hearings around the country and make definitive recommendations within a six- to twelve-month period.

We suggest the following alternatives be considered in reforming the environmental management program of DOE:

1. The EPA could be given the authority to carry out the remediation, with regulation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This suffers from the disadvantage that it is the option most likely to result in a wholesale transfer of existing management structure to the new system with only a change of nameplates. Moreover, EPA now regulates the non-radioactive toxic aspects and some radioactive aspects of DOE programs. These would no longer be independently regulated if the EPA is the implementing authority. It may also create new funding uncertainties and jeopardize the program: most Environmental Management funding is part of the Congressional process for funding nuclear-related military expenditures. Overall, despite some strengths, this option appears to have too many weaknesses to be effective.

2. The affected states and Indian tribes could be given the authority and the money to remediate the weapons complex in their states, under national clean-up standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, and mandatory guidelines for public participation. Contrary to the federal government, states and Indian tribes would have an interest in remediating contaminated sites and in minimizing the amount of land that is written off because they would have use of this land. But provisions would have to be made that the money they are given is contingent on actually carrying out remediation according to national standards, enforced by federal agencies. While there are clear advantages to this approach there are also many weaknesses. The states may not have the staffing and expertise to do the job, nor the experience to oversee it. Moreover, politics at the state level may be even more vulnerable than federal-level politics to the influence of contracting corporations with deep pockets. Further, guaranteeing a flow of funds to the states, given the vicissitudes of federal politics, is also a huge problem. Finally, the issue of dispute resolution between states and Indian tribes may be become more difficult.

3. A federally-owned corporation, operating under strict public accountability and openness rules, could be created for the purpose of doing and/or subcontracting environmental remediation. In order to prevent the reform from being an exercise in a change of nameplates, a majority of the Board of Directors and top management of the corporation could be appointed by the governors of the affected states, with the rest being appointed by the President of the United States.

In all cases, we believe that a parallel restructuring of long-term waste management should be carried out, with research and development being the main priority at this stage, perhaps under the purview of the National Science Foundation, and long-term implementation being under the purview of a body similar to that mentioned in option 3. Overall, it appears that the last option may have the smallest number of weaknesses, provided a process exists to ensure openness as well as considerable control by affected states and Indian tribes. Finally, stringent, nationally-mandated, and independently-enforced remediation and waste management standards are crucial to the success of any institutional reform. Without them, public accountability and yardsticks by which to clearly measure environmental performance will be lacking.

5. Restructure Long-term Waste Management

The two repository programs that DOE is pursuing, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in New Mexico and Yucca Mountain in Nevada, are obstacles to sound long-term waste management. DOE has put a high priority on WIPP because of politically expedient promises made to the states of Colorado and Idaho arising out of the fire at the Rocky Flats plant in 1969. However, WIPP cannot accommodate all the TRU waste in the weapons complex. Moreover, it is a site with many flaws (see Appendix B). Yet DOE is focusing most resources on it for political and legal reasons, while the urgent environmental problems fester. Buried TRU waste are affecting or threatening several of the country's vital groundwater resources, and in the case of Hanford, the Columbia River. The resources being poured into Yucca Mountain also arise out of unrealistic promises made to utilities that are being given a higher priority than any sense of addressing the immense, historically unprecedented problem of how we shall protect generations tens of thousands of years into the future. Yucca Mountain is also a flawed site, and radiation doses to maximally exposed individuals are calculated to be high (see Appendix B.) Finally, the EPA standards for waste disposal at WIPP are not stringent enough since they do not limit maximum doses for the duration of the threat from the waste, but for an arbitrary period of 10,000 years, which is far shorter than the half-lives of important constituents of TRU waste such as plutonium-239 and neptunium-237. There are no EPA standards for Yucca Mountain.

Our detailed examination of the problem of buried TRU waste and TRU contaminated soil in this study and previous examination of the high-level waste that DOE now assumes will go to Yucca Mountain has led us to conclude that neither the long-term waste management problems nor the DOE environmental remediation program are likely to be put on a sound footing until the WIPP and Yucca Mountain projects are stopped. In addition, the problem of the long-term management of all highly radioactive, long-lived waste, independent of present classification status, must be separated from DOE and reorganized to put scientific investigation and environmental protection first.

Stabilization and storage of TRU waste and other long lived waste can proceed in a much more sound fashion if the DOE is not acting under a primarily political mandate to send TRU waste to WIPP and commercial spent fuel and vitrified high-level waste to Yucca Mountain. It will take some time to implement a thorough program of management of long-lived radioactive waste. Interim storage and long-term management need to be coordinated so long-term goals can be achieved without compromising safety.

Many fear that taking the time to structure a long-term program of research and development may result in DOE and commercial reactor sites becoming de facto sites for indefinite storage. That would be unacceptable both from a security and environmental point of view. A commitment to find enduring answers must accompany interim stabilization and interim on-site storage. The program for long-term management of long-lived radioactive waste should include:

1. A through integration of all waste containing substantial quantities of long-lived waste with concentrations above those which could produce radiation doses to maximally-exposed individuals above the limits for stringent remediation standards. This should include spent fuel, reprocessing waste, waste presently defined as Class C waste, Greater-than-Class-C waste, TRU waste, and depleted uranium, as well as much of what is now in the Class B waste category.

2. A scientifically sound program of research, including research into natural materials and formations that contain radioactive materials for millions of years;

3. A program of research into subseabed disposal;

4. Stabilization and interim on-site storage of waste;

5. A definition of "long-lived" radionuclides that includes all radionuclides with half-lives more than 10 years;

6. Scrapping present high-level waste repository and "low-level" waste shallow land burial programs.

Recommendations for TRU Waste Management

The vast majority of resources being spent on TRU waste management are being devoted to the development of the WIPP repository program. The waste slated to go to WIPP are the retrievably stored TRU waste. Of all TRU waste, this category poses the least risks to short- and medium-term health and the environment because waste packaging is relatively sound and the waste is stored in buildings or shelters of some sort.⁴ Moreover, DOE plans treatment of this waste to further stabilize them and reduce the organic toxic component. DOE's focus on this waste does not arise out of environmental considerations but of political commitments, notably to the state of Idaho, that the waste would be moved to a repository. At the same time, buried TRU waste are the stepchild of the program, getting little attention.

Our case study of TRU waste shows that in Idaho and several other sites, such as Hanford, buried TRU waste and TRU contaminated soil pose far more urgent and severe risks to precious groundwater and surface water resources than retrievably stored TRU waste. We have found agreement about the relative gravity and urgency of these threats in private discussions with the DOE and even in one "on the record" discussion with Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Alvin Alm, who acknowledged that political commitments were driving the program.⁵ We do not believe that the risks this generation's activities will pose for children far into the future should be addressed by resort to political expediency. WIPP cannot accommodate most TRU waste, which are in the form of buried TRU waste and associated highly contaminated soil. At this stage it is far more important to take measures to protect water resources from further contamination and to remove and stabilize buried TRU waste and TRU soil. Moreover, the WIPP site as well as the regulations governing TRU disposal there are flawed. Thus a host of considerations point to stopping the WIPP program and redirecting scarce resources to where they are most needed -- preventing further damage from past practices and the creation of a sound long-term waste management program (discussed above).

Our main recommendations for TRU waste management are:

1. DOE should work with Congress and the affected states to stop the WIPP program and reorient the TRU management program to buried waste and TRU soil. Monitoring of retrievably-stored waste should be continued.

2. DOE should create an urgent program of estimating how much buried TRU waste there is along the lines of the Idaho Lab's effort, the only site that has attempted to review records in order to develop scientifically-defensible waste volume and radioactivity estimates. The overall effort could perhaps be modeled on the plutonium and uranium vulnerability studies.

3. DOE should abandon a strict distinction between the current TRU waste classification (100 nanocuries per gram) and waste with somewhat lower TRU concentrations (10 to 100 nanocuries per gram) and proceed to treat all waste associated with TRU burial areas as TRU waste, unless a there is a technically and economically defensible rationale to do otherwise.

4. DOE should examine the feasibility of excavating all buried TRU waste and associated soil (as defined in item 3 above) and storing it retrievably along with TRU waste that is already classified as "retrievably stored." Due to the existing soil and groundwater contamination caused by buried TRU waste, as well as the long half-lives of transuranic radionuclides, "institutional controls" and "caps" are especially inappropriate "solutions."

5. DOE should pursue a more technically-sound effort to develop safe retrieval technologies for TRU waste. Particular attention should be given to serious hazards that could affect worker safety and health, including explosives and highly-toxic materials that may be buried at some sites. DOE should continue to develop remote-excavation technology for those areas where there may be special risks, such as dangers of chemical explosions. We have not examined the remote excavation system at the Pit 9 project in sufficient detail to comment on its technical merits. (The treatment system has not been built.)

6. DOE should accelerate development of technology to reduce waste volume and treat the organic toxic component of the waste, which would mainly leave a radioactive waste and heavy metal disposal problem. It should integrate treatment of buried and retrievable TRU waste. For instance, it should integrate the treatment of excavated waste at Idaho with treatment of retrievably stored waste.

7. DOE should merge the TRU repository program and the high-level waste repository program into a single program, as discussed in the section on general recommendations.

Recommendations for Hanford High-Level Tank
Management and Vadose Zone Remediation

DOE's approach to management of the Hanford high-level waste tanks and the vadose zone (the soil and rocks between the tanks and the groundwater table) exemplifies many of the problems that plague the entire environmental management program. It is based on the idea that Yucca Mountain will be the repository, though mounting evidence indicates that this is an inappropriate assumption. With that starting point, the plan is to reduce the amount of waste going to the repository, even if it greatly increases the volume of highly radioactive waste that is dumped on site. This waste, which is called "low-level" in the United States, would in other countries such as Britain or France, be designated for repository disposal. DOE is focusing on the tanks without a concomitant high priority to the highly-contaminated vadose zone (that is, the soil between the tanks and the groundwater table).

Further, DOE has not accounted for the cost of local dumping of highly- radioactive Class C waste. Were commercial low-level waste disposal costs to be attributed to Hanford low-level waste disposal, these costs would be of the same order of magnitude as those for repository disposal, especially if the waste created by filling the tanks with cement are taken into account.⁶

Moreover, DOE does not appear to be planning for the decommissioning of the tanks themselves. Rather, the plan appears to be to pour cement into the tanks after DOE meets the legal agreement to empty them of 99 percent of the waste. This Tri-Party Agreement goal is arbitrary and also scientifically and environmentally unsound. One percent of waste left behind in the tanks will possibly have millions of curies quantities of residual radioactivity. Further, the cementation of the tanks will greatly complicate any future attempts to remediate the vadose zone.

We have addressed in detail the flaws in the high-level waste repository program elsewhere and will not repeat them here.⁷ We strongly urge that the current repository program be terminated. The restructuring of the Hanford tanks program, however, does not depend on the restructuring of the entire high-level waste management program. Even if the Yucca Mountain program were to proceed, there are strong, indeed, decisive arguments, in favor of treating the entire tank contents as high-level waste to be immobilized for repository disposal. Simply put, remediation of the site and protection of groundwater resources and the Columbia River over the long-term cannot be accomplished unless the tank farms are decommissioned and the vadose zone substantially remediated.

As we have discussed in Chapter Three, 84 to 182 acres of repository space would be required if DOE's assumptions about total vitrified waste volume are correct. We estimate total repository disposal costs of $2 to 4.4 billion an overall disposal costs (excluding processing) of about $10 billion. This is $30 billion less than DOE's cost estimate for the same thing. We find DOE's cost estimate to be without clear technical foundation. The repository space requirements and costs could be reduced further through other high-level waste treatment options.

Vitrification (after preprocessing), however, is not the only alternative, nor necessarily the best one. Vitrification at Hanford seems to have been decided as an extension of the Savannah River Site program, where a high-level waste vitrification plant is in operation. DOE seems not to have learned the lessons of the huge cost overruns and delays of that program. The Savannah River program was deeply flawed by the absence of thorough pilot plant testing of all the processes required for successful waste vitrification. As a result, pretreatment of cesium-containing waste is still not operational. The $4 billion plant was supposed to go fully on line in 1989, but only vitrification of sludge has been initiated and even this portion did not begin until 1996. Further, only part of the sludge can be vitrified until other safety issues are resolved.

Hanford waste is far more complex in chemical composition and physical state than Savannah River Site waste. DOE has not paid enough attention to the huge technical issues facing satisfactory pretreatment or glass production. It does not appear to have assessed the failure of the Fernald silo waste vitrification pilot plant for any lessons it might hold for Hanford. Yet, it has already decided that vitrification of both the high-level and "low-level" components is the appropriate technology to pursue. If the Savannah River experience is any guide, the highly complex nature of Hanford waste is likely to pose severe technical and operation problems. DOE's approach of "privatizing" treatment for two tanks is a very inadequate basis on which to proceed with Hanford waste treatment.

Further, DOE's assumption that Hanford high-level waste glass will be of sufficiently uniform and controlled quality that will be qualified to be put into a repository is also questionable. Savannah River waste is far simpler than Hanford waste because Savannah River Site operated only one type of chemical reprocessing plant -- that based on the PUREX process. Hanford had several different reprocessing plants, and also added a variety of other materials to the waste, such as ferrocyanides. As a result the composition of Hanford glass may be quite different from that at Savannah River Site. Proceeding with vitrification of Hanford waste in the hasty fashion that DOE is will not only likely increase the technical difficulties, costs, and delays -- it may result in a failed program.

There is another approach to solidification of Hanford waste that DOE has rejected because waste solidified in this way would not be qualified for repository disposal. That approach is to heat the Hanford wastes and turn them into a powder form -- a process called calcining. While calcining Hanford waste will be far more difficult than similar processes carried out at Idaho and in France, and calcination process chemistry specific to Hanford waste will likely have to be worked out. Calcination it will result in greatly reduced and stable waste volume and one which is likely to be more compatible with either vitrification or immobilization in ceramics. Calcine can be stored without the same kind of serious short- and medium-term risks to the environment associated with the current form of tank waste. There is no need to assume that calcined waste forms would be put into a repository, as DOE has done in its Tank Waste Remediation System EIS.⁸ Calcined waste can be immobilized at a later date with glass or with ceramics.

In sum, the Hanford tank program needs to be thoroughly revamped, including goals, technology development, milestones, contracting arrangements, accountability, cost estimates, and oversight. The Hanford tank program should shift from the present arbitrary goals to ones that are better suited to environmental protection, and to short- and long-term waste management and disposal.

Our recommendations for the Hanford high-level waste management program are based on the premise that it is essential to protect the groundwater resources and the Columbia River. For this, the long-term goal must be to empty the tanks, to decommission them, and to remediate the vadose zone. This will require many steps and a long-term commitment. Some of the technology remains to be developed. Considerable amounts of time and resources will be needed to remediate the tank farm areas. Given that a large program of technology development is needed, it is impossible to say at the present time to what extent a goal of remediation can be achieved and what restriction there may be on the area. But the principle that we have articulated in our general recommendation needs to be kept in mind. While it may not be possible to meet stringent standards for remediation today in all cases, present actions should not foreclose or make far more difficult actions that may be taken in the future.

We are reasonably convinced that DOE is on a needlessly risky course. Given the complexity of the problem and our limited resources, we can only make preliminary recommendations that DOE and the Technical Advisory Panel on Hanford tanks, as well as the EPA and the State of Washington, should evaluate thoroughly. Our suggested approach has the following elements:

1. DOE should continue the transfer of the liquids in single shell tanks to the double shell tanks with far greater attention to safety issues. Specifically,

• Sampling of all ferrocyanide tanks should be completed and these tanks should continue to be monitored.

• DOE should re-evaluate the criticality safety issues for sludges as they presently lie in the tanks and re-institute this as a safety priority.

• Assessment of dangers from organics in the tanks should be given more urgent consideration.

• Chemical and radiological criteria for declaring the tanks to be "interim stabilized" should be established, especially in view of the presence of explosive materials and the potential for tanks without water to increase in temperature.

2. DOE should abandon the plan to dispose of Class C "low-level" waste on site and adopt a goal to process all high-level waste tank contents for management as high-level waste.

3. The Tri-Party Agreement should be amended to discard the 99 percent retrieval goal and replace it with two sets of goals.⁹ The long-term goals should be to empty the tanks entirely, decommission them, and remediate the vadose zone. The interim goals should be (i) stop all leaks, (ii) stabilize the single shell tanks and ensure the safety of the hardened waste remaining in them, and (iii) ensure the safety of the double-shell tanks, especially with regard to the compatibility of any waste transferred to them.

4. In light of investigations into contamination of the vadose zone (e.g., the SX Tank Farm report), groundwater models need to be thoroughly revamped. Further, decisions regarding remediation of the environmental contamination due to the tank farms should be integrated with the tank waste program. DOE should greatly expand its program to characterize the vadose zone and the migration of contamination within it to the groundwater and thence to the Columbia River.

5. DOE should expand its program of technological research and development into safely emptying the tanks of hardened waste.

6. DOE should initiate two parallel programs for solidification of high-level waste. One program should develop methods for calcining the high-level waste coupled with research into ceramic immobilization forms for calcined waste. This program should be implemented along with a program of vitrification research and development for calcined waste forms. The second should pursue the development of pretreatment and specific glass-making approaches that would not require calcining.

7. In all three areas of solidification specific to Hanford waste -- calcining, vitrification, and ceramic immobilization -- DOE should immediately expand existing laboratory work and initiate small pilot-plant programs that would thoroughly test all technologies and waste forms using non-radioactive materials. A considerable body of work has already been done in various contexts and DOE should draw upon it in designing the Hanford program. But much more work remains to be done that is specific to Hanford tanks, including development of retrieval and pretreatment technologies as well as immobilization processes that will be compatible with a long-term waste management program.

8. DOE should accelerate its efforts aimed at characterizing inactive and improperly abandoned tanks and the soil around them.

9. Auxiliary facilities such as transfer pipelines, junction boxes, and pumps need to be investigated to determine the extent of contamination and the scope of decontamination and decommissioning.

10. DOE should not pursue "privatization" for Hanford tanks. It is fraught with risks for the government and likely to create new problems, disputes, and delays. At the very least, a thorough analysis and wide public debate of the failing "privatized" Pit 9 project in Idaho should be mandated before any other significant environmental remediation or waste management program work is "privatized" -- let alone the largest, most complicated and unprecedented work in the DOE weapons complex.

Recommendations for Fernald's
Radium- and Thorium-Contaminated Silos

The management and technical flaws in the vitrification program for the radium-contaminated waste at Fernald have not only increased costs and uncertainties, they have exacerbated specific short-term threats to workers and communities nearby. The short-term measure taken to reduce radon emission, the addition of a layer of bentonite clay to Silos 1 and 2, is failing and radon levels in the headspace of the silos are rising. Addition of bentonite has also complicated and made more expensive long-term remediation efforts and it did not address roof integrity problems. At the same time, delays are exacerbating the possibility of a silo roof collapse. Such a possibility would increase radon emissions and create a far more dangerous situation for remediation.

To address this problem, DOE appears to be again resorting to an approach that has failed time and again -- rush into a "new "solution" without adequate preparation. Given the past record, this approach may not solve the long-term problem and does not address the dangers arising from the delays that have already occurred. In view of the delays that have already occurred, the large slippage in schedule for completion of silo remediation, the major uncertainties facing the project, and the rising levels of radon, DOE should implement the tornado-resistant enclosure option. Its cost is small compared to cost escalations that have already occurred. Had it been done earlier, it would have been the one demonstrable achievement of the remediation program for the silos. This will not prevent a collapse of the roof, of course, but it will address the main dangers that would arise from it.

Our main recommendations for the radium- and thorium-contaminated waste at Fernald are:

The entire remediation program for the silos needs to be put on a sound financial and technical footing in order to implement the Record of Decision. Given prior egregious misestimations and escalation and the fact that the project now is estimated to involve hundreds of millions of dollars, a thorough independent review of both accounting and engineering aspects needs to be carried out before any cost increases are granted.

The waste in all three silos should be more thoroughly characterized. Development of vitrification techniques for the waste in Silos 1 and 2 should proceed along a focused, targeted effort in the 1-2 year time frame. Specifically,

• further work should be done using several small experimental melters to address the feasibility, processing rate, and economics of treating the mixture of sulfates and lead in Silos 1 and 2;

• a careful review of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's experience with developing a melter that handles molten lead might be useful in designing Silo 1 and 2 vitrification;

• stirred glass melters and cold crucible melters should be evaluated for their ability to address surface layer problems and high temperature problems;

• greater efforts need to be made to incorporate European experience and the experience in the rest of the DOE in experimental and design phases of the project;

Vitrification of Silo 3 waste, the remedy selected in the Record of Decision, should be placed ahead of any other technical approaches to stabilization of Silo 3 waste. A decision to change treatment of the waste in Silo 3 should be taken only after sufficient experimentation and evaluation of Silo 3 vitrification has been carried out.

A modular approach to vitrification, which would allow for operating flexibility in order to treat a potentially heterogeneous waste feed, is advisable.

DOE should not rush into alternative treatments, such as cementation, given DOE's own evaluation of problems and difficulties with such technologies.

"Privatization" is not an appropriate contracting mechanism for the remediation of the waste in the silos. Privatization would reduce the ability of DOE to oversee the contractor and might result in less accountability to regulators and the public (see the Pit 9 discussion in the TRU case study).

The demonstration of vitrification as a viable technology for radioactive waste is an important goal for the rest of the DOE complex. Demonstration of the ability to treat the radioactive and hazardous waste in the silos by vitrification is important to dealing with the vast environmental legacy of nuclear weapons production. Many sites across the United States, as well as other countries, have waste that needs to be treated to reduce their mobility in the environment and the health and environmental hazards that they pose. Some of the waste may be candidates for treatment by vitrification.

For information related to this report, see Science for Democratic Action Vol. 6 No. 1.

1. Based on Makhijani, 1992 and in part on the Military Production Network's 1996 position on Clean-up.

2. See Hanford case study for more details.

3. IPPNW and IEER, 1992, page 54.

4. DOE has called a variety of TRU wastes "retrievably stored." It does not currently consider all of its "retrievably stored" waste to in fact, be readily retrievable. Also, some "retrievably stored" waste is currently being removed from dirt cover and being placed in covered buildings or shelters.

5. IEER,1997

6. Low-level waste disposal costs are in excess of $200 per cubic foot, up roughly a hundred fold from the costs two decades ago. DOE plans to create 350,000 cubic meters (more than 12 million cubic feet) of low-level wastes. Filling the tanks with cement would create another 500,000 cubic meters, for a total of almost 30 million cubic feet. The total imputed costs for low-level waste disposal at $200 per cubic foot would therefore be $6 billion.

7. See Makhijani and Saleska, 1992 and IEER, 1997b. A part of IEER, 1997b is reproduced in Appendix B of this report.

8. See discussion of the calcination option in DOE Richland, 1996b, pages 3-72 to 3-78.

9. We wish to emphasize that we are not recommending that the Tri-Party Agreement be abandoned; only that the 99 percent goal be amended as discussed.