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GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
E. D. Clayton, H. K. Clark, D. W. Magnuson,+ J. H. Chalmers,† Gordon Walker,‡ N. Ketzlach, Ryohei Kiyose,++ C. L. Brown, D. R. Smith,††, R. Artigas ‡‡
Nuclear Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | August 1977 | Pages 97-111
Technical Paper | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31853
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Subcommittee 8 of the Standards Committee of the American Nuclear Society has proposed a standard providing subcritical limits for operations with mixed oxides of plutonium and uranium. The subcritical limit is the limiting value assigned to a controlled parameter that results in a system known to be subcritical, provided the limiting value of no other controlled parameter of the system is violated. The proposed standard includes subcritical limits for mixed oxides containing up to 30 wt% plutonium in Pu + U. A review was made of the available experimental data and validations undertaken that serve as the basis of the limits, and the assertion that they are, indeed, subcritical as given.