AREA COMPLETION STRATEGIES AT SAVANNAH RIVER SITE: CHARACTERIZATION FOR CLOSURE AND BEYOND

During the first four decades of its 56 year existence, the Savannah River Site (SRS) was a key supplier of nuclear material for national defense. During the 1990s, the site's primary missions became waste site closure, environmental restoration, and deactivation and decommissioning (D&D) of remnant cold war apparatus. Since 1989, with the approval of State and Federal regulatory agencies and with the participation of interested stakeholders, SRS has implemented a final remedy for a majority of the more than 500 individual waste sites at the former nuclear materials complex. These waste sites range from small, inert rubble pits to large, heavy industrial areas and radioactive waste disposal grounds. The closure and final remediation of these waste sites mark significant progress toward achieving SRS's overarching goal of reducing or eliminating future environmental damage and human health threats. However, larger challenges remain. For example, what are appropriate and achievable end-states for decommissioned nuclear facilities? What environmental and human health risks are associated with these end-states? To answer these questions within the strictures of smaller budgets and accelerated schedules, SRS is implementing an ''area completion'' strategy that: (1) unites several discrete waste units into one conceptual model, (2) integrates historically disparate environmental characterization and D&D activities, (3) reduces the number of required regulatory documents, and (4) in some cases, compresses schedules for achieving a stakeholder-approved end-state.