Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 3
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2022; Chicago
Session Z13: Radioactive Nuclear Waste - A Problem Not Going AwayInvited Live Streamed Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Cherrill Spencer, SLAC - Natl Accelerator Lab Room: McCormick Place W-183A |
Friday, March 18, 2022 11:30AM - 12:06PM |
Z13.00001: Status of Environmental Cleanup Conducted by the Office of Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy Invited Speaker: Nicole Nelson-Jean The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for one of the largest environmental remediation efforts in the world. EM's mission is to safely address the substantial environmental liability resulting primarily from decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. Over the past three decades, the EM program has achieved significant and lasting progress in tackling its environmental legacy. EM has eliminated, or mitigated, at most sites the environmental, safety, and health risks from the most dangerous legacy wastes and contaminated facilities. In addition, contaminant pathways have been effectively controlled in groundwater and soils to mitigate potential future risks. The program's combined active remediation footprint has been reduced by 90 percent, from approximately 3,300 square miles to less than 300 square miles. EM is currently executing environmental cleanup at the remaining 16 of the original 107 sites around the United States. EM has developed a Strategic Vision that provides a clear and concise roadmap to guide our planning and priorities. The Strategic Vision showcases EM's pursuit of its nuclear material cleanup objectives safely within a framework of regulatory compliance commitments and best business practices. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, EM achieved a historic slate of accomplishments in 2021. These achievements have set the stage for accelerating cleanup momentum across the environmental cleanup complex. |
Friday, March 18, 2022 12:06PM - 12:42PM |
Z13.00002: Cleaning up the Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production: Progress and Challenges at the Hanford Site Invited Speaker: Thomas Brouns The Hanford Site in southeast Washington State developed out of the Manhattan Project in the early 1940’s and ultimately produced two-thirds of the United States plutonium for nuclear weapons. The nuclear materials derived from Hanford’s nuclear reactors and chemical processing plants also generated large volumes of chemical and radioactive wastes. Planned and unplanned releases of waste to the environment resulted in contamination of soil and groundwater. Clean-up of the Hanford Site began in earnest in 1989 after the US Department of Energy, US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington State Department of Ecology entered into a Federal Facility Compliance Agreement (FFCA), also known as the Tri-Party Agreement to clean up the Hanford Site |
Friday, March 18, 2022 12:42PM - 1:18PM |
Z13.00003: WIPP: The Only TRU Waste Repository? Invited Speaker: Don Hancock The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico is the world’s only operating deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. Agreements with New Mexico state officials and federal law provide that WIPP would be the first, but not only, repository. However, the Department of Energy (DOE) is not seeking to find sites for other repositories, though the agency is planning for the creation of much more transuranic (TRU or plutonium-contaminated) waste. Two major new sources of such waste, which were not included in the original WIPP inventory, are surplus plutonium from the existing nuclear weapons stockpile and TRU waste from the production of thousands of new plutonium pits or cores for future nuclear weapons. Despite agreements and laws, those wastes that require geologic disposal would have to go to WIPP if there is no other site. |
Friday, March 18, 2022 1:18PM - 1:54PM |
Z13.00004: Nuclear Waste Problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA Invited Speaker: Joni Arends
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Friday, March 18, 2022 1:54PM - 2:30PM |
Z13.00005: Leaking wastes from nuclear weapons activities: Scientific and regulatory challenges from a community perspective Invited Speaker: Denise Duffield The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is a former nuclear and rocket engine testing site located in the Simi Hills about 30 miles from Los Angeles that operated from 1947 to 2006. Over the decades it was home to ten nuclear reactors, a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, and a "hot lab" for processing irradiated nuclear fuel. Three reactors suffered accidents, including one in which a third of the fuel melted and radioactive gases were released into the environment. Numerous other accidents, releases, spills, and thousands of rocket-engine tests resulted in widespread radiological and chemical contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water runoff. Federally-funded studies confirm off site migration of contamination and increased cancers for workers and for the offsite community associated with proximity to the site. New pediatric cancer clusters in the community near the site also give cause for concern. In 2010, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) signed agreements with the Department of Energy, NASA, and Boeing that required full cleanup of their operational areas by 2017. However the cleanup hasn't begun and the responsible parties are pushing to leave most of the contamination on site. In 2018 the devastating Woolsey fire began at and burned most of the site, increasing public exposure to SSFL contamination as confirmed in a recent study published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. |
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