Radioactive Waste Disposal
at Hanford
D. W. Pearce, Manager
and
J. F. Honstead, Supervisor, Geochemical and Geophysical
Research in Chemical Effluents Technology
Hanford Laboratories Operation
General Electric Company
Richland, Washington
The subject of this paper is "Radioactive Waste Disposal" but as
Dr. Wolman of Johns Hopkins University recently pointed out, the
word "disposal" is not appropriate in this application. Liquid radioactive
wastes can be changed in chemical form and moved to inaccessible locations or diluted to innocuous concentrations, but only natural decay
can ultimately destroy their hazardous components. The subject, therefore, deals with some of the experience and knowledge gained at Hanford concerning the controlled storage or dilution of typical nuclear
plant effluents containing radioactive materials.
The problems encountered in handling, storing, and diluting radioactive liquid wastes are not basically different, except in degree, from
those encountered in other chemical industries. Nuclear plant wastes
are unique in the nature of the hazard, the extremely small chemical
concentration of radioactive material that can be tolerated in a populated environment, and the built-in mechanism for self-destruction that
gradually destroys each radioisotope at a constant, predictable rate. Hanford concentrates and segregates the major fraction of the hazardous
radioactive fission products into high-level, low volume waste solutions
that are then contained in permanent underground storage tanks. Our
attention will be centered largely on the remaining tiny fraction of the
radioactive material that contaminates larger volume streams of waste
effluent from Hanford plants. The environment of a nuclear plant plays
an extremely important part in the containment or dilution of plant
wastes. The technology associated with the disposal of low or intermediate level wastes is largely concerned with their relationship to the
Hanford plant environment.
Figure 1 shows the geography of the area, the Columbia, Yakima,
and Snake Rivers, the Rattlesnake Hills, and the Gable Mountain-Gable
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