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  Envirocare Mixed Waste Facility Description

  Heart of America Northwest

  Description of the mixed waste facility Envirocare of Utah, Inc. site, a commercial radioactive waste disposal facility located near Clive, UT, about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City and just south of Interstate 80.

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu

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  Nevada Test Site Mixed Waste Disposal Facilities

  Heart of America Northwest

  A Citizen’s Guide to the Nevada Test Site. The Nevada Test Site is located approximately 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas and encompasses about 1350 square miles of Nevada desert, in the Yucca FlatsRegion. The NTS was used for nuclear weapons testing from 1951 through 1992 including both above ground testing and below ground shots.

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu

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  Mixed Low-Level Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Disposal Facilities

  Heart of America Northwest and John R. Brodeur

  Candidate sites for disposal of USDOE’s Mixed Wastes (MW), must be judged according to their hydrogeology over an appropriate time frame: up to 10,000 years. US Department of Energy (USDOE) has identified three options for disposal of vast quantities of Mixed Waste. Those three options include the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (alongside the Columbia River in Washington), Nevada Test Site (NTS) and at a private facility in Clive, Utah run by Envirocare of Utah (whose parent company was recently renamed “EnviroSolutions”). The quantities of wastes that might be added to the soils at these sites are enormous.1 All three are currently disposing of Mixed Waste or in the process of permitting for this purpose.

  In this report, for the first time, the alternative sites for disposal of Mixed Waste are independently compared in regard to their fundamental geologic and hyrodologic conditions, design, standards utilized, and actual monitoring. A fundamental conclusion of the report by John Brodeur, L.G.E, P.E., is that the hydrogeologic landscape determines the fundamental scale of impacts to the environment and human health – regardless of MLL Radioactive & Hazardous Waste Facilities 6 engineering efforts. In sum, the site matters. In addition to the site, the design and actual operation are shown to matter a great deal, and we find tremendous differences exist between alternative sites.

  
  This publication is a compilation of research and work products undertaken during the duration of a CitizensMonitoring and Technical Assistance Fund grant from 2004 through March 2006, to create a Cross-Site Review of Mixed Waste Disposal Facilities, and review Hanford specific landfill related documents and decisions. While comparing the three major alternative disposal sites (Hanford, NTS and Envirocare), four specific burial grounds were considered at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation: Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF); Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF); US Ecology Commercial Low-Level Waste landfill; and, USDOE’s Hanford Low-Level Burial Grounds (LLGB).

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu

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  Comments of Heart of America Northwest, Heart of America Northwest Research Center on Revised Draft Hanford Solid (Radioactive and Hazardous) Waste Program Environmental Impact Statement (RD-HSWEIS)

  Heart of America Northwest

  In 2000, USDOE imported 232,000 cubic feet of radioactive wastes to Hanford and dumped them in unlined soil trenches with no leachate collection and without legally compliant groundwater or soil column monitoring systems. This was enough waste to cover two football fields in radioactive wastes to a height that would bury a six and a half foot tall player in radioactive waste.

  We call for USDOE to end dumping in unlined trenches by December, 31, 2003. It can and must be done. USDOE proposes, on the contrary, to keep using unlined soil trenches indefinitely and to formally designate Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump after issuing a final version of this EIS.

  Here is a summary of some of the decisions that USDOE plans to issue as soon as the new version of the Hanford Solid Waste EIS is finalized. These decisions will be made in one or more “Record of Decisions”, for which USDOE managers have said that the Assistant Secretary of Energy has set a deadline of July 31, 2003 to have issued.

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 3 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu

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  Groundwater Strategy for Hanford: A Contrast in Citizens’ Vision and Goals With USDOE’s and its Partner Tri-Party Agreement Agencies' Vision and Goals

  Heart of America Northwest

  This report consists of in-depth a detailed statement and description concerning the following injustices:

  USDOE was allowed to delay construction of the massive plants needed to vitrify (turn into glass) Hanford’s deadly High-Level Nuclear Wastes, stored in 178 massive tanks, of which 68 have leaked over a million gallons of waste. Those leaks, and future leaks, are a major part of the concern over Hanford’s groundwater and the threat it poses to the Columbia River. In exchange for delaying vitrification, USDOE agreed to new Hanford Clean-Up Agreement milestones for cleanup of the Columbia River Corridor. Hanford’s top managers stated that they were committed to achieving the goal of unrestricted public use of the Columbia River corridor by 2011.
  
  This, however, is a promise that has been forgotten and broken – like the treaty rights of the Yakama, Umatilla and Nez Perce Nations. All three tribes have guaranteed rights to live along the River, and fish at usual and accustomed fishing places, under the Treaties of 1855. Exposure to contamination from the soil and groundwater makes the exercise of these Treaty rights impossible today.
  
  Nor is there any hope under the national “strategy” and “goals” adopted by the Bush Administration’s Department of Energy that the Hanford Reach National Monument will be safe for public and Tribal use by 2018, much less 2011. (“A Review of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Program”, February, 2002; and, implementation plans in the Hanford Performance Management Plan, “approved” by the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental management, August, 2002). USDOE unilaterally changed the goal for soil cleanup along the Reach from 2011 to 2012, calling this an “accelerated cleanup plan” (or, “Hanford 2012 Plan”). USDOE left out of its “2012 plan” any goal or strategy for cleaning up the groundwater along the Hanford Reach. Rather, the USDOE’s national goals and strategies, and Hanford specific plans call for:
  
  • allowing the contaminated groundwater to spread from the Hanford Central Plateau’s “200 Areas” (200 East and 200 West, where Plutonium and Uranium extraction occurred, and where the High-Level Waste tanks are located);
  • changing the “points of compliance” from the edge of waste dumps and contaminated soil sites to the River shore1 ; and,
  • using “natural attenuation” with monitoring to allow the contamination levels to grow before they eventually get diluted or the radionuclides decay over hundreds or thousands of years.

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 3 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu

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  A Review and Comparison of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facilities

  Heart of America Northwest, John R. Brodeur, and Gerald Pollet

  In 2002, the Department of Energy (DOE) released the draft Hanford Solid Waste Environmental Impact Statement (DOE 2002). That draft called for the disposal of over 12 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) at Hanford in unlined near-surface disposal trenches. The draft EIS was withdrawn by USDOE following public comment, as urged by numerous official agency, advisory board and public commentators. In April, 2003, USDOE issued the Revised Draft Hanford Solid Waste EIS, which forecast that USDOE would dispose of up to 12.3 million cubic feet of LLRW in near-surface burial trenches.1 Sixty three percent (63%) of this LLRW would be imported to Hanford for burial. At an undefined future date, the Revised Draft EIS proposed that LLRW would be buried together in new trenches with up to 5 million cubic feet of Mixed Low-Level Waste, which is Low-Level Radioactive Waste mixed with hazardous chemical wastes.2 To develop a technical position on the proposal for use of Hanford newr- surface burial for Low-Level Wastes, Heart of America NW wanted to know if the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Burial Grounds meet the basic engineering requirements for such facilities and how they compare with other similar facilities and alternative potential disposal sites available to USDOE for these wastes. As such, this report represents the first independent, publicly available Cross-Site Comparison of USDOE Low-Level Radioactive Waste Burial Ground Alternatives.

  Performing a complete engineering review of multiple facilities was clearly beyond the potential budget capacity so a proposal was proffered to limit the investigation to the geotechnical aspects of representative LLRW disposal facilities. This type of focused review was accomplished by visiting the sites and reviewing documentation on the sites. Performance standards and review criteria were identified and the disposal facilities were evaluated to determine how well they meet the performance standards. This is the basis for a comparison of the facilities.

  This report presents the results of this study.

  This research was completed money allocated during Round 3 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

  If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at digitalrepository@clarku.edu