Our review of DOE's data on buried transuranic waste revealed that at many sites, the values given for the volume, radioactivity, and mass of buried transuranic waste often vary from year to year in ways that do not always seem to have reasonable explanations. In general, these changes do not reflect new waste being buried or old buried waste being dug up, but appear to be the result of: 1) re-categorization of waste containing between 10 and 100 nanocuries per gram from TRU waste to "low-level" waste; 2) realization that some "retrievably stored" waste is, in fact, not readily retrievable; 3) re-examination of old records; and 4) mistakes.

(Source for all charts: Containing the Cold War Mess, Chapter 2.)

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