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

4.87
discharges of cooling tower blowdown. With proper intake structure design and placement in
the river, the loss of aquatic organisms through intake screen impingement and entrainment
in the cooling water is expected to have no significant impact on the river ecosystem.
Since the concentration of air pollutants resulting from operation of the waste manage-
ment facilities is several orders of magnitude lower than those allowed by the air quality
standards, no impacts to the terrestrial ecosystem are expected. No toxic effects to native
plant species in the environment are expected during the life of the facilities or during
decommissioning.
Some particulates and gases will be released to the atmosphere from combustion of fos-
sil fuels during normal transport operations; however, these releases are expected to be of
no ecological significance.
4.7.2.5 Socioeconomic Impacts of Reprocessing Fuel Cycle Waste Management
Socioeconomic impacts associated with waste management facilities depend largely on the
numbers of persons who move into the county in which the facilities will be located. To
analyze socioeconomic impacts, therefore, the size of the population influx and the needs
for local social services were estimated.
The number of in-migrants resulting from construction and operation of waste management
facilities is estimated to be large enough to have a significant socioeconomic impact only
in the reference Southwest location for the FRP waste management facilities and the RWSF.
In these two cases, the number of in-migrants amounts to about 8% of the existing population
during construction and about 4% during operation. These facilities at the reference South-
east and Midwest sites are estimated to give population increases of 1% or less. The MOX-
FFP waste management facilities are estimated to give population increases of 0.1% or less
at each of the three reference sites.
The translation of estimated project-related in-migration into socioeconomic impacts
is complex and imprecise. Estimates of the level of demand that will be placed on the com-
munity to provide social services to the new workers and their families were made by apply-
ing a set of factors (Appendix G) to the project in-migration values. The product of these
factors indicates how many units of each social service would be "expected" by the
in-migrants. The severity or significance of these impacts is primarily related to the
capacity of the site county to meet these expectations. The calculated level of expected
social services at the three sites in different areas of the U.S. is given for the year 2000
in Table 4.7.9.
The most significant demands arise for the Southwest site where an adequate labor pool
is not expected to exist. However, the social service demands are small compared to those
for the FRP and MOX-FFP production facilities.