Savannah River Site
F-Tank Farm and H-Tank Farm
NDAA 3116 Waste Determinations
Section 3116 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 (Section 3116) authorizes the Secretary of Energy,
in consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), to determine that certain waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is not high-level
waste and that it may instead be disposed of as low-level radioactive waste if it meets the criteria set forth in Section 3116. A Waste Determination
Basis (WD Basis) provides the analysis to document the Secretary's determination to manage the residuals as low-level radioactive waste.
The Savannah River Site has several facilities which will be managed under Section 3116. The F-Area Tank Farm (FTF) WD Basis covers 20 tanks remaining
to be closed in the FTF and the H-Area Tank Farm (HTF) WD Basis will cover all 29 HTF tanks. In addition, Salt Waste disposal already has a Secretarial Waste
Determination issued for disposal of the low activity waste resulting from the tank farms. The Salt Waste disposal information can be found HERE.
Several technical documents describing the facility and how it will be closed in a safe and low risk manner are issued for each facility. These documents estimate the future risk to a member of the public
over thousands of years based on assumptions regarding how well DOE is able to clean the tanks and what estimated residuals remain. During consultation with NRC, DOE submitted preliminary versions of these documents
for NRC and public review and modified based on comments received. These facilities are also regulated by the State of South Carolina and EPA, Region IV and other documents are submitted to the regulators for approval
prior to any final actions taken. Also, prior to closure of the tanks, actual samples are analyzed and compared to the estimates in the technical documents and the long-term risks are re-evaluated to verify that there is
no additional risk to the public based on final residuals. These documents are submitted to the regulators to gain their approval to close the tanks.
F-Tank Farm Waste Determination
NRC issued their consultative Technical Evaluation Report (TER), on October 27, 2011, and it is available on the NRC electronic reading room at http://www.nrc.gov with
an ADAMS accession number of ML112371715. Also, available on the NRC electronic reading room, are the NRC Request for Additional Information (RAI) with the DOE responses to
those RAIs. Several other documents support the information in the waste determination and DOE has included links to those documents, below. The following are links to the
Secretarial determination as well as the documents produced supporting that determination. Questions can be sent to Linda Suttora at Linda.Suttora@em.doe.gov.
A National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Record of Decision (ROD) was supplemented to reflect that the tanks are being closed under the requirements of Section 3116 in addition to those requirements in DOE Order 435.1.
No other decision regarding closing the tanks was modified from the ROD and therefore A copy of the NEPA Supplement Analysis is available on the web site, http://www.srs.gov/general/pubs/envbul/nepa1.htm.
SRS FTF Section 3116 Basis for Determination 
SRS FTF Section 3116 Determination signed by Secretary Chu
F-Tank Farm Performance Assessment, Rev 1
H-Tank Farm Waste Determination
Following a similar process, DOE-SRS has drafted an HTF PA. A public meeting to scope the HTF PA was held in April, 2010 in Aiken, South Carolina. A summary of the meeting can be viewed at the link below.
Many of the assumptions for the HTF PA are similar to those developed for the FTF PA so only one scoping
meeting was held. The HTF PA is available for viewing below. The public comment period closed in June, 2011. Questions on the documents can be sent to Linda Suttora at Linda.Suttora@em.doe.gov
Meeting Summary for HTF PA Scoping
First Draft HTF PA for Public Comment
|