IMPROVEMENTS IN CONTAINER MANAGEMENT OF TRANSURANIC (TRU) AND LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORED AT THE CENTRAL WASTE COMPLEX (CWC) AT HANFORD

The Central Waste Complex (CWC) is the interim storage facility for Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) mixed waste, transuranic waste, transuranic mixed waste, low-level and low-level mixed radioactive waste at the Department of Energy's (DOE'S) Hanford Site. The majority of the waste stored at the facility is retrieved from the low-level burial grounds in the 200 West Area at the Site, with minor quantities of newly generated waste from on-site and off-site waste generators. The CWC comprises 18 storage buildings that house 13,000 containers. Each waste container within the facility is scanned into its location by building, module, tier and position and the information is stored in a site-wide database. As waste is retrieved from the burial grounds, a preliminary non-destructive assay is performed to determine if the waste is transuranic (TRU) or low-level waste (LLW) and subsequently shipped to the CWC. In general, the TRU and LLW waste containers are stored in separate locations within the CWC, but the final disposition of each waste container is not known upon receipt. The final disposition of each waste container is determined by the appropriate program as process knowledge is applied and characterization data becomes available. Waste containers are stored within the CWC based on their physical chemical and radiological hazards. Further segregation within each building is done by container size (55-gallon, 85-gallon, Standard Waste Box) and waste stream. Due to this waste storage scheme, assembling waste containers for shipment out of the CWC has been time consuming and labor intensive. Qualitatively, the ratio of containers moved to containers in the outgoing shipment has been excessively high, which correlates to additional worker exposure, shipment delays, and operational inefficiencies. These inefficiencies impacted the LLW Program's ability to meet commitments established by the Tri-Party Agreement, an agreement between the State of Washington, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency. These commitments require waste containers to be shipped off site for disposal and/or treatment within a certain time frame. Because the program was struggling to meet production demands, the Production and Planning group was tasked with developing a method to assist the LLW Program in fulfilling its requirements. Using existing databases for container management, a single electronic spreadsheet was created to visually map every waste container within the CWC. The file displays the exact location (e.g., building, module, tier, position) of each container in a format that replicates the actual layout in the facility. In addition, each container was placed into a queue defined by the LLW and TRU waste management programs. The queues were developed based on characterization requirements, treatment type and location, and potential final disposition. This visual aid allows the user to select containers from similar queues and view their location within the facility. The user selects containers in a centralized location, rather than random locations, to expedite shipments out of the facility. This increases efficiency for generating the shipments, as well as decreasing worker exposure and container handling time when gathering containers for shipment by reducing movements of waste container. As the containers are collected for shipment, the remaining containers are segregated by queue, which further reduces future container movements