ASME Message

Abstracts
SESSION M1: Environmental Management
1) 40086 – Legacy Management: Turning Liabilities into Assets
Joe Legare, Eric Olson, S.M. Stoller Corporation (USA)
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Legacy Management (LM) is responsible for stewardship of over
85 sites across the USA dating back to the Manhattan Project and associated with the nuclear weapons production
mission. This responsibility for the long-term environmental management of these sites includes the key requirements to
ensure protection of human health and protection of the environment from residual contamination, and to manage over
100,000 ft3 of associated records.
The Legacy Management program, through its prime contractor, provides program management, field and technical
support, data collection and analysis and project planning and implementation in support of the DOE to achieve its
mission. With a defined program baseline of 75 years, and a theoretical baseline that may extend beyond this time period,
effective programmatic integration of these myriad sites, and appropriate consideration of life-cycle implications to risk
and cost of stewardship decisions is essential to the success of the program.
This presentation will provide an overview of the more than 85 sites in the Legacy Management program, including
a discussion of prior mission and associated environmental contamination issues; ramifications of the different regulatory
and cleanup approaches taken during active remediation; and the challenges of the current long-term surveillance and
maintenance mission. Additionally, the presentation will address lessons learned during the first eight years of the
Legacy Management program in terms of risk management, public and stakeholder involvement, institutional controls,
regulatory agreements and the issues associated with transition from active remediation to long-term surveillance and
maintenance. Some of the case histories of how environmental management of these varied sites has evolved over time
will be presented.
2) 40270 – Lessons Learned in Planning the Canadian Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program
Michael Stephens, Sheila M. Brooks, Joan Miller, Robert Mason, AECL (Canada)
In 2006, AECL and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) began implementing a Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program
(NLLP) to manage the liabilities at AECL’s nuclear sites in Canada. These liabilities include shutdown research and
prototype power reactors, fuel-handling facilities, radiochemical laboratories, support buildings, radioactive waste
storage facilities, and contaminated lands. The delivery of the Program is managed by a Liability Management Unit
(LMU) within AECL.
The NLLP comprises a large program of interlinked decommissioning, waste management and environmental
restoration activities being executed at different sites, and by various technical groups as suppliers to the LMU. This
paper describes the lessons learned in planning the “start-up” phase, which will conclude 2011 March, and the planning
of the second phase, a 5-year program, which is currently being finalized.
The initial “start-up” phase was planned by a small group of experts. Although effort was made to communicate the
goals and overall strategy of the Program to the groups that would carry out the work, progress was slower than
anticipated because AECL was ramping up from a minimal maintenance mode and the required increase in staff and
technical resources was not sufficiently understood. Many of the projects being addressed within the Program are oneof-a-kind,
and the essential base information on which to prepare detailed execution plans was not available to accurately
plan the work.
Internal reviews of the Program examined progress and identified several improvements to planning. These
included strengthening communications, conducting more advance planning of the interlinked activities, and building
flexibility into the commitments made about activities that had yet to reach major decision points.
The priorities for executing the required activities in the Program were set using criteria based on risks the liabilities
presented to health, safety, the environment and to AECL’s business. In future, the decision criteria will also include the
value gained for funds expended, and greater consideration will be given to mitigating risks to the execution of the
Program. It was also determined that licensing strategies and processes need to be well-defined, and waste
characterization methods and disposition pathways must be in place to deal with the wastes the Program will generate.
Case studies will be presented in the paper to illustrate these lessons learned.
The NLLP is funded by the Government of Canada through NRCan.
3) 40218 – RFID Technology for Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management
Hanchung Tsai, Yung Liu, ANL (USA); James Shuler, US DOE (USA)
We have developed an advanced Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) system capable of tracking and monitoring a wide
range of materials and components for the nuclear industry – from fissionable stocks to radioactive wastes. The RFID technology has a
number of advantages, such as enhanced safety and security, reduced personnel exposure to radiations, and improved inventory control.
The sensors in the RFID tags monitor the state of health (e.g., temperature, shock, seal, dose, and dose rate) of the item and send out an
alarm instantly when the sensor threshold is violated. Nonvolatile memories in the tag store data from sensors and event records, as
well as manifest information if so desired. In irradiation tests, the tag electronics was confirmed to possess significant radiation
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