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A cost study for enhanced sludge washing of high‐level radioactive waste at the U.S. Department of energy Hanford Site
Author(s) -
DeMuth Scott,
Shieh Andrew
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
remediation journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1520-6831
pISSN - 1051-5658
DOI - 10.1002/rem.3440090404
Subject(s) - hanford site , environmental remediation , waste management , high level waste , environmental science , investment (military) , radioactive waste , hazardous waste , environmental engineering , engineering , contamination , ecology , politics , political science , law , biology
Enhanced Sludge Washing (ESW) with caustic has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of sludge‐based underground storage tank (UST) high‐level radioactive waste at the Hanford Site. The alternative to ESW is a simple sludge wash, a process that does not take advantege of recent dissolution development efforts. During the past several years, studies have been conducted to determine the remediation cost savings derived from the development and deployment of ESW. The tank waste inventory and ESW process performance continues to be revised as waste characterization, and ESW development efforts advance. This study provides a new cost savings estimate based upon the most recent waste inventory and ESW process performance revisions, an estimate of the associated cost savings uncertainty, and an estimate of the rate of return (ROR) on the investment in technology development. The revised remediation cost savings estimate due to ESW of all UST waste at Hanford is $4.8 billion ± $0.7 billion within 95 percent confidence in 1998 dollars. The ROR on investment was estimated to range from 100 percent to 130 percent. A sensitivity analysis indicated that it would be difficult to imagine a remediation scenario for which ESW did not yield a significant remediation cost savings and ROR.