[en] The plasma hearth process (PHP) presented in this report has been tested at a facility at Ukiah, California, in a cooperative effort between the Department of Energy (DOE), Science Applications International Corporation, Inc., and ReTech, Inc. The electrically heated plasma gas is used to destroy organic materials and bind radionuclides and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) metals in the glassy slag. Proof-of-principle tests were conducted successfully using nonhazardous and non-radioactive materials placed in 30-gal steel drums. On-line analyses of the gaseous effluents indicated complete combustion; emissions of CO, NO_x, and particulates were low. The process also produced highly stable solid waste forms. The experiments for the next phase have been planned employing surrogates for the hazardous and radioactive components of the simulated waste streams. Natural cerium oxide is selected to simulate the behavior of radioactive actinide and transuranium elements, while natural cesium chloride is simulated for the study of relatively volatile radioactive fission products. For RCRA organics, naphthalene and 1,2-dichlorobenzene are semivolatile compounds selected to represent significant challenges to thermal destruction, whereas chlorobenzene is selected for the study of relatively volatile organics. Salts of chromium, nickel, lead, and cadmium are chosen to represent the twelve regulated toxic metals for emission and partitioning studies. The simulated waste packages presented in the text do not necessarily represent an individual waste stream within the DOE complex; rather, they were formulated to represent the most probable components in generic waste stream categories