Sorption and diffusion studies of Pu(IV) and Pu(V)-EDTA onto and through Hanford soil

Plutonium production at U.S. Department of Energy Hanford site has created massive amounts of radioactive and mixed wastes. Over 1.3 trillion liters of liquid waste have been discharged into the ground, the largest part of which has been absorbed by the upper soil layers with a small fraction migrating into the groundwater. Approximately 350 million liters of other low and high-level mixed wastes were stored in underground tanks between 1944 and 1980. These tanks contain organic materials that were introduced during the production and processing of plutonium, such as ethylenediametetraacetic acid (EDTA), tributyl phosphate, hexone, paraffin hydrocarbon and other minor organic and inorganic components. The quantity of EDTA is estimated to be 83 metric tons in the underground tanks. Several single-shell tanks are known or suspected to have leaked. It was reported that since 1995, approximately four million liters of mixed waste might have entered the soil beneath the single-shell tanks. This volume of waste is estimated to contain as much as one million curies of radioactivity