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

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.145<br />

WASTE MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS<br />

The volatile materials and TRU elements separated in fuel reprocessing and captured in<br />

accordance with the uranium fuel cycle standards (40 CFR 190) are omitted in this discus-<br />

sion. They should be included. (113-EPA)<br />

Response<br />

The sentence in question does indeed appear to be redundant and need not have been<br />

included in the draft Statement. It does not appear in the final Statement.<br />

DOE agrees that there is likely to be a point where the uranium and plutonium no longer<br />

have sufficient value to justify recycle. How much segregation <strong>of</strong> uranium and plutonium<br />

recycle batches may be practiced is an economic and technical decision that will be deter-<br />

mined by the industry when and if recycle becomes a reality. Recycled uranium and plutonium<br />

are not necessarily contained in the same fuel elements. Segregation <strong>of</strong> recycled uranium<br />

will be difficult if it is sent back to the diffusion cascade for reenrichment. DOE has<br />

assumed in the system simulation (Chapter 7.0 <strong>of</strong> the final Statement) that uranium or pluto-<br />

nium enriched fuel elements that represent third recycle discharges will be reprocessed but<br />

neither the uranium nor the plutonium is further recycled. The uranium is assumed to be<br />

sent to storage with diffusion cascade tails for other potential uses. The plutonium is<br />

assumed to be dispersed in and immobilized with the high-level waste.<br />

The handling <strong>of</strong> the volatile materials and TRU elements separated in fuel processing<br />

was included in the draft Statement in Section 3.1.4 and, in more detail, in Appendix L.<br />

In the final Statement, the treatment and storage <strong>of</strong> these materials are covered in<br />

Sections 4.3 and 4.4.<br />

Draft p. 1.9<br />

Issue<br />

One commenter noted that regarding Table 1.1 <strong>of</strong> the draft Statement:<br />

* Some <strong>of</strong> the numbers cannot be derived from other tables presented.<br />

* Column heading or footnote should indicate that hulls and hardware are included<br />

in the TRU intermediate-level waste, if that is the case.<br />

* Column heading should indicate that the low-level waste is TRU contaminated.<br />

Response<br />

(208-NRC)<br />

Table 1.1 in the Summary <strong>of</strong> the draft Statement represented an attempt to present-com-<br />

plex data-sets in a summary fashion, however, the table did contain errors and may have been<br />

overly condensed. It is not used in the final Statement.

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