Potential Waste Minimization Activities Following a Wide-Area Radiological Release - 22234

Management of waste from radiological incidents is complicated by the fact that decontamination decisions have a profound impact on the characteristics of resulting waste streams. Wide-area radiological incidents could produce massive quantities of waste that might need to be treated on-site and sent for subsequent disposal as non-contaminated materials, or else be directly disposed of as radiologically contaminated materials. Minimization of the quantity and volume of materials that are managed as radiological waste will be an important aspect of a wide-area response/recovery operation following a release. Improvised Nuclear Devices (IND), radiological dispersal devices (RDD), or nuclear power plant (NPP) accidents can contaminate vast urban areas. Other than the potentially highly contaminated materials located at the epicenter of the release, the vast majority of materials that would potentially enter the waste stream from such incidents will be from outlying areas and will likely appear to be physically unaffected even by an explosive release, and contamination will be primarily found on the surface. Although decontamination of many urban materials presents a technical and operational challenge, most of the materials from these types of incidents will not be found as a comingled pile of debris (such as what is generated from earthquakes or hurricanes). This presents the opportunity to perform waste segregation operations to isolate different types of materials for post-incident processing, including decontamination, recycling, or even reuse, provided that the proper decision makers confirm the ability for free release of the materials. Another aspect of the waste streams that would be a good candidate for minimization activities are the aqueous wastes generated from decontamination operations. Many potentially effective decontamination approaches for urban materials include washing with large quantities of water. The estimated quantities of water that would be required could potentially impact local water utilities' ability to deliver sufficient water to meet customer demands during extended periods because customers could continue to occupy lesser contaminated parts of the urban area. Recycling wash water into continued decontamination operations could potentially represent a significant reduction in water demand, easing utilities' ability to deliver sufficient wash water as well as significantly reducing the amount of aqueous waste that is generated. This paper will present an incident scenario including estimates of both solid and aqueous waste as a function of two different decontamination strategies that produce different distributions of waste. We will then explore different waste minimization options and estimate the quantities, residual activity, and costs associated with management of the resulting wastes. (authors)