Airborne Waste - doe-std-1128-98

DOE-STD-1128-98

the process to plate or precipitate the material as a final step in the process line,

before it is declared a waste.

Most plutonium facilities will produce TRU waste or TRU mixed waste.

According to national policy, DOE TRU waste is supposed to be permanently

disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) at Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Volume allocations have been given to each DOE site for the waste to be placed

there, so limiting the quantity of high-level TRU waste is extremely important.

Therefore, volume reduction of TRU waste is highly desirable. Incineration offers

the greatest volume reduction and has the added advantage of destroying some

types of hazardous constituents (flammable and other organic compounds).

High-level wastes are slated to be disposed of at a high-level waste repository. A

site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is being evaluated for this purpose. In the interim,

TRU waste is being stored either at the sites that are generating it or, for some DOE

facilities, at the Nevada Test Site, until a final repository is available. Long-term

maintenance of interim storage facilities, plus the prospect of later moves to the

final disposal site and burial at that site, make high-level waste very costly.

8.2

AIRBORNE WASTE

The only airborne plutonium likely to arise from either normal operations or

decommissioning of DOE facilities will be in a particulate form. Although plutonium

vapors are possible during cutting and perhaps some grinding operations, they will soon

condense to particulate material.

8.2.1

Design Objectives

Plutonium particulates are notoriously difficult to confine and extensive use is

made of glove boxes, local ventilation systems, fixatives, and other means to

minimize generation of particulates and to confine them. The high-efficiency

particulate air (HEPA) filter is the backbone of plutonium air-cleaning systems.

Such filters are certified to have a 99.93% removal efficiency for particulates of 0.3

m and larger and are normally used with at least two in series.

8-5