Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico Research Articles

Transuranic (TRU) waste generated by the handling of plutonium in research on or production of US nuclear weapons will be disposed of in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). This paper describes the physical and radiological properties of the TRU waste that will be deposited in the WIPP. This geologic repository will accommodate up to 175,564 m{sup 3} of TRU waste, corresponding to 168,485 m{sup 3} of contact-handled (CH-) TRU waste and 7,079 m{sup 3} of remote-handled (RH-) TRU waste. Approximately 35% of the TRU waste is currently packaged and stored (i.e., legacy) waste, with the remainder of the waste to be packaged or generated and packaged in activities before the year 2033, the closure time for the repository. These wastes were produced at 27 US Department of Energy (DOE) sites in the course of generating defense nuclear materials. The radionuclide and nonradionuclide inventories for the TRU wastes described in this paper were used in the 1996 WIPP Compliance Certification Application (CCA) performance assessment calculations by Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM).