The mixed waste management facility: Cost-benefit for the Mixed Waste Management Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Mixed Waste Management Facility, or MWMF, has been proposed as a national testbed facility for the demonstration and evaluation of technologies that are alternatives to incineration for the treatment of mixed low-level waste. The facility design will enable evaluation of technologies at pilot scale, including all aspects of the processes, from receiving and feed preparation to the preparation of final forms for disposal. The MWMF will reduce the risk of deploying such technologies by addressing the following: (1) Engineering development and scale-up. (2) Process integration and activation of the treatment systems. (3) Permitting and stakeholder issues. In light of the severe financial constraints imposed on the DOE and federal programs, DOE/HQ requested a study to assess the cost benefit for the MWMF given other potential alternatives to meet waste treatment needs. The MVVMF Project was asked to consider alternatives specifically associated with commercialization and privatization of the DOE site waste treatment operations and the acceptability (or lack of acceptability) of incineration as a waste treatment process. The result of this study will be one of the key elements for a DOE decision on proceeding with the MWMF into Final Design (KD-2) vs. proceeding with other options