EPA’s Geospatial Tools for Managing Large Volumes of Radiological Waste
Citation:
Boe, T., P. Lemieux, E. Snyder, M. Rodgers, AND C. Hayes. EPA’s Geospatial Tools for Managing Large Volumes of Radiological Waste . Presented at WM2021 Conference, Phoenix, AZ, March 07 - 11, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
The Waste Management Symposium conference for the management of radioactive waste and related topics provides the premier open forum for discussing and seeking safe, environmentally responsible, technically sound and cost effective solutions to the management and disposition of radioactive wastes. Waste management responsibilities for events such as hazardous materials incidents (e.g., chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) substances) are driven by national & EPA guidance/policy. Decontamination efforts following a large-scale CBR incident have the potential to generate a significant amount of waste. Response and recovery are largely a function of decontamination and waste management strategies. Research driven models & tools are critical to understanding the scale and decisions necessary to support cleanup.
Description:
Large-scale disasters have the potential to generate a significant amount of waste. For example, Hurricane Katrina and the Joplin Missouri tornado resulted in 100 million and 1.5 million cubic yards of waste, respectively. Man-made chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) incidents either by way of terrorism, war, or accidents have the potential to generate as much or more waste, including some form of hazardous waste. Recovery will likely be profoundly impacted by waste management issues and the strategies selected to manage them. The quantification, segregation, transportation, and storage of waste can be an arduous and costly undertaking. Furthermore, these processes are intricately linked with other decisions made throughout the recovery timeline. Therefore, the remediation, including waste management, must be holistically considered. Understanding these complex interactions can be facilitated by using models and tools that adhere to the “system-of-systems” approach. To better understand and predict waste management issues, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP) is developing a suite of tools and resources for planning and response/recovery purposes, including two newly developed GIS-based tools. Due to the anticipated scarcity of GIS experts during these high impact, low probability incidents, both of these tools are intended to be operated by a user base with only a minimal amount of GIS expertise. EPA’s Waste Staging and Storage Site Selection Tool uses spatial information and analysis techniques to help identify and prioritize potential locations for staging and storing waste. The tool analyzes siting criteria for a specified geographic area to identify candidate sites and their total available land surface areas. The tool was developed to help decision makers better understand potential options for staging and storing waste and to illuminate potential capacity constraints when conducting planning efforts. Beyond identifying where waste may be staged or stored is the need to evaluate considerations related to the resource demands associated with transporting and disposing of waste. EPA’s All Hazards Logistics Tool calculates the cost and time to manage the transportation and handling of a user-specified quantity of waste and allows users to run routing scenarios with user-defined destinations. Factors specific to waste type, hauling rates, and acceptance rates allow users to explore options and evaluate constraints to improve preparedness for managing large volumes of waste. This paper will feature a hypothetical radiological incident with the purpose of modeling the implications of staging and transporting large volumes of waste. The findings of this paper will highlight the cost-benefit aspects of decisions when determining optimal waste staging locations and routes, environmental and mitigative considerations, and best practices.