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

Socioeconomic Impacts
6.131
Socioeconomic impacts associated with the transmutation alternative would occur primarily
as a result of construction, operation, and transportation activities. Implementation of
this alternative would involve a major construction force of over 3,000 individuals. Employ-
ment needs during operation would diminish to approximately 350 individuals per year for the
FRP-WTF and 250 for the FFP-WTE (Smith and Davis 1980). These activities would also support
increased transportation employment.
Compared to the baseline case of reprocessing without partitioning, operational em-
ployment levels for transmutation would increase substantially at the reprocessing and MOX
fuel fabrication centers. Estimated work force increases are 35 and 80 percent at repro-
cessing and fuel fabrication facilities, respectively. Estimated socioeconomic impacts of
such facilities are only conjectural at this point and specific impacts of hypothetical com-
munities and groups are not included in this discussion.
Aesthetic Impacts
No data exist suggesting that aesthetic concerns from facilities required for trans-
mutation activities would be greater than those associated with the reprocessing without
partitioning. Neither the appearance or noise levels produced from the additional parti-
tioning facilities should vary significantly from the baseline fuel reprocessing and prepara-
tion facilities.
Resource Consumption
Fuel and raw materials used in construction, as well as the chemicals and fuel required
during operations and subsequent transportation activities, would be the most important re-
sources used in the partitioning and transmutation process. For construction activities, a
range of energy sources would be used in hardware fabrication and in actual construction
operations. Other building materials such as steel, sand, and gravel typically used in major
construction activities would also be consumed.
The reprocessing and partitioning process would also require quantities of chemicals,
including nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, hexanitrate acid, and several solvents. These
chemicals would react with the waste material to fonn secondary wastes, as well as the de-
sired end products.
Additional land would be required for this alternative. Facilities at the reprocessing
plant should occupy 70 ha (172 acres) (Smith and Davis 1980) compared with 36 ha (90 acres)
at present (DOE 1979c), and at the fuel fabrication plant 24 ha (59 acres) (Smith and Davis
1980) compared with 3 ha (8 acres) at present (DOE 1979c). Such a facility would normally
process approximately 400 MTHM/year. In addition to the acreage occupied by each facility,
large "restricted" areas would have to be established. Because of the conceptual nature of
these facilities and the many possible ways they might be laid out, there are no specific es-
timates of the total size of restricted areas. At a minimum, the combined reprocessing and