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

3.2 BASES FOR THE ANALYSIS
3.7
A number of bases for analysis must be established to assess environmental impacts
associated with a nuclear waste disposal technology. This includes the identification and
description of predisposal facilities necessary for waste management, as well as a descrip-
tion of the disposal facilities themselves. Further, the physical, biological and social
environments into which these facilities will be placed must be characterized. However,
total or net environmental impacts cannot be described completely by the effects of single
facilities in the environment, so this Statement also analyzes complete waste management
systems. The key assumptions associated with a systems analysis are those of nuclear power
growth (i.e., amount of waste to be disposed) and the nuclear fuel cycles considered (i.e.,
kinds of waste to be disposed).
The general approach to environmental assessment used here investigates potential
impacts associated with construction, operation (including potential accidents), and decom-
missioning of predisposal facilities (including treatment, transportation and storage of
wastes) and the repository system itself. Physical protection requirements for safeguard-
ing the wastes from theft or sabotage are also evaluated. Impacts resulting from nuclear
waste disposal include those associated with resource commitments, ecological and atmo-
spheric effects, radiological effects, socioeconomic effects, and the costs of waste manage-
ment and disposal.
Predisposal facilities are discussed in Chapter 4, and geologic repositories are dis-
cussed in Chapter 5. Conceptual facilities are described, their impacts and costs of con-
struction and operation are estimated, and safeguard requirements are evaluated. These
conceptual facilities and impacts are described in detail in Technology for Commercial
Radioactive Waste Management, DOE/ET-0028, April 1979 and Environmental Aspects of Commer-
cial Radioactive Waste Management, DOE/ET-0029, April 1979. Summary descriptions and key
results are presented in Chapters 4 and 5.
A description of the physical environments for the different facilities is given in
Chapter 5 for geologic disposal and in Chapter 6 for alternative technologies. The biolog-
ical and social environments used hypothetical or reference conditions which were assumed
common to all geologic repositories and associated waste management facilities. For assess-
ing general environmental and health effects for these facilities, a single reference envi-
ronment was developed and is described in Appendix F. This reference environment provides
the necessary description of environmental characteristics (e.g., demography, atmospheric
dispersion patterns, surface waters, plant and animal communities) that serve as a baseline
for generically estimatingenvironmental impacts of waste management and disposal. Three
reference environments were used to assess the socioeconomic impacts of the influx of work-
ers associated with geologic repositories and related facilities, because socioeconomic
impacts are particularly sensitive to variation in demography (Appendix G). The use of
reference environments should not be construed as an endorsement of particular regions for
siting waste management and disposal facilities but rather as convenient and realistic
assessment tools. Different reference environments and bases for analyses were used in the
case of alternative disposal technologies and are described where used in Section 6.1.