Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

F.1
APPENDIX F
REFERENCE ENVIRONMENT FOR ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
The following reference environment was developed as an aid in assessing environmental
impacts associated with construction and operation of waste treatment, interim storage
and/or final disposition facilities. The reference environment concept is used to replace,
where appropriate, the criteria-type approach to generic environmental assessment.
The reference environment was developed primarily from data on existing plant sites in
the midwestern United States. There is, however, no intent to endorse this area or type of
environment for any nuclear fuel cycle facility. Since the reference environment is to be
used in a generic or hypothetical sense, references supporting the descriptive material were
not considered necessary and are not included. The reference environment is representative
of the surface geology only and has nothing to do with the deep geology as may be appicable
to siting to waste repositories in geologic media.
For assessment of environmental effects, it is assumed that each waste management
facility is located (independently, not collocated) within the reference environment.
Although an artificiality, analysis of impacts from waste management facilities centered at
the same location simplifies calculations and permits direct comparison of impacts among
facilities on the same environmental features.
F.1 LOCATION OF SITE
Regardless of the size of the site or purpose to which it is to be put, the center of
the site is assumed to be located 8 km west of the R River, about 13 km northwest of Town A
in county A, and 50 km northwest of a major metropolitan area (City G) in a midwestern
state.