A MULTI-ATTRIBUTE UTILITY DECISION ANALYSIS FOR TREATMENT ALTERNATIVES FOR THE DOE-SR ALUMINUM-BASED SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

The current mission of the Department of Energy Savannah River Operations (DOE-SR) with respect to aluminum-based spent nuclear fuel (Al-SNF) is “to identify and implement appropriate actions for the safe and efficient management of spent nuclear fuel …including placing these materials in forms suitable for ultimate disposition. ” as stated in the Savannah River Site Spent Nuclear Fuel Management: Preliminary Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The proximate goal for DOE-SR is to identify the treatment alternatives for Al-SNF that achieve this mission with optimal efficiency and effectiveness. A multi-attribute utility decision analysis (MUA) was performed to address this decision. The results of the MUA indicate that, for DOE-SR, the utility for the melt and dilute treatment alternative is greater than the utility for direct disposal. This result is due largely to the DOE-SR perception of the acceptability of the treatment alternatives to peer reviewers, and to the weight that DOE-SR puts on this acceptability. Sensitivity analyses were performed on the model to examine the impact of different decision-maker values on the outcome. The relatively higher utility for melt and dilute was present throughout the sensitivity analyses, except when extreme changes were forced into the model. In particular, the higher utility for melt and dilute could be eliminated by removing “acceptability ” from the analysis, and could be reversed by reversing the acceptability values