IDENTIFICATION OF DOE'S POST-CLOSURE MONITORING NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS

Abstract

The 2006 plan sets an ambitious agenda for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the remediation of sites contaminated by decades of nuclear weapons production activities. The plan's primary objective is to reduce overall clean up costs by first eliminating the environmental problems that are most expensive to control and safely maintain. In the context of the 2006 Plan, closure refers to the completion of area or facility specific cleanup projects. The cleanup levels are determined by the planned future use of the site or facility. Use restrictions are still undecided for most sites but are highly probable to exclude residential or agricultural activities. Most of the land will be remediated to ''industrial use'' levels with access restrictions and some areas will be closed-off through containment. Portions of the site will be reserved for waste disposal, either as a waste repository or the in-situ immobilization of contaminated soil and groundwater, and land use will be restricted to waste disposal only. The land used for waste disposal will require monitoring and maintenance activities after closure. Most of the land used for industrial use may also require such postclosure activities. The required postclosure monitoring and maintenance activities will be imposed by regulators and stakeholders. Regulators will not approve closure plans without clearly defined monitoring methods using approved technologies. Therefore, among all other more costly and labor-intensive closure-related activities, inadequate planning for monitoring and lack of appropriate monitoring technologies can prevent closure. The purpose of this project is to determine, document, and track the current and evolving postclosure monitoring requirements at DOE-EM sites. This information will aid CMST-CP in guiding its postclosure technology development and deployment efforts.