Plutonium Equivalent Inventory for Belowground Radioactive Waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Area 54, Area G Disposal Facility - Fiscal Year 2011

French, Sean B.¹  Shuman, Rob² 

[1] Los Alamos National Laboratory;WPS: WASTE PROJECTS AND SERVICES

关键词: AR FACILITIES;    ACCIDENTS;    ALPHA-BEARING WASTES;    INVENTORIES;    LANL;    LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES;    MANAGEMENT;    PERFORMANCE;    PLUTONIUM;    RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS;    RADIOACTIVE WASTES;    RADIOISOTOPES;    SAFETY;    SAFETY ANALYSIS;    WASTES;    WIPP;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1038875
RP-ID  :  LA-UR-12-20679
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1038875
Others  :  TRN: US1202118

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来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) generates radioactive waste as a result of various activities. Many aspects of the management of this waste are conducted at Technical Area 54 (TA-54); Area G plays a key role in these management activities as the Laboratory's only disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste (LLW). Furthermore, Area G serves as a staging area for transuranic (TRU) waste that will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for disposal. A portion of this TRU waste is retrievably stored in pits, trenches, and shafts. The radioactive waste disposed of or stored at Area G poses potential short- and long-term risks to workers at the disposal facility and to members of the public. These risks are directly proportional to the radionuclide inventories in the waste. The Area G performance assessment and composite analysis (LANL, 2008a) project long-term risks to members of the public; short-term risks to workers and members of the public, such as those posed by accidents, are addressed by the Area G Documented Safety Analysis (LANL, 2011a). The Documented Safety Analysis uses an inventory expressed in terms of plutonium-equivalent curies, referred to as the PE-Ci inventory, to estimate these risks. The Technical Safety Requirements for Technical Area 54, Area G (LANL, 2011b) establishes a belowground radioactive material limit that ensures the cumulative projected inventory authorized for the Area G site is not exceeded. The total belowground radioactive waste inventory limit established for Area G is 110,000 PE-Ci. The PE-Ci inventory is updated annually; this report presents the inventory prepared for 2011. The approach used to estimate the inventory is described in Section 2. The results of the analysis are presented in Section 3.