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Stewardship Principles

Stewardship Principles. “[S]tewardship is a pervasive concept and not simply a set of measures to be implemented once remediation is complete.  . . . “Today’s waste management actions should become an integral part of stewardship planning.”. -Long-Term Institutional Management of

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Stewardship Principles

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  1. Stewardship Principles “[S]tewardship is a pervasive concept and not simply a set of measures to be implemented once remediation is complete.  . . . “Today’s waste management actions should become an integral part of stewardship planning.” -Long-Term Institutional Management of DOE Legacy Waste Sites

  2. Long-Term Institutional Management (LTIM)— • Seeks to deploy multiple measures in a balanced, integrative, systematic way • Is phasedand iterative through time • Is active in its search for better remedies • Aims to be self-correcting, self-improving (i.e., adaptive) through (long) time NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

  3. The “Three-Legged Stool” of Long-Term Institutional Management NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

  4. LTIM Study Recommendations • Adopt a “pessimistic” planning basisthat assumes: • Institutional controls will eventually fail; • Engineered barriers have more limited lives than contaminants they contain; • Assumptions about contaminant migration may prove wrong. NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

  5. Current LTS Issues & Themes • Scientific and technical uncertainties • (Responses to, implications of) • Social and institutional vulnerabilities • (As mediators of vulnerabilities assoc. w/ biophysical and engineered environment) • Stakeholder roles • (Approaches to ensuring decision transparency)

  6. Scientific & Technical Uncertainties (and implications for life-cycle costs)

  7. Plutonium travel time and the conceptual model problem: Changing understanding of contaminant transport at the Idaho site NRC Report on Research Needs in Subsurface Science

  8. Aerial view looking East Columbia River is to the left

  9. Process Effluent TrenchAfter Remediation Surface Excavated Trench Side Wall 5 m Floor Side Wall Residual Contamination 8 m Side Wall Groundwater

  10. Cleanup Verification PackageProcess Effluent Trench Soil Concentrations at time of Remediation Dose and Risk Projections for 1000 years RESRAD Model Side Wall • Environmental Transport • Exposure and dose • Risk Side Wall • Most of the dose and risk is from the side wall

  11. StewardshipCost* Drivers • Risk to environment and public health • Stakeholder concerns • Ongoing routine operations • Environmental monitoring • Water treatment • Security • Maintenance • Vegetation control • Vandalism repair • Institutional controls Burrell, Pennsylvania *Costs meant to be low, as DOE envisions little human interaction at “stabilized” sites.

  12. Two Approaches to Long-Term Stewardship Cost Accounting $6 billion/yr Annual Cost to DOE $150 million/yr Today 2006 2050

  13. Potential Social Cost of Long-Term Stewardship: Alternative Models Total Social Cost -- $$$ (function of discovery date and scope of LTS failure, should one occur.) * $$ ** $ *** Today 2006 2050

  14. Thinking “Outside the Box” about Vulnerability (Social and Institutional Vulnerabilities)

  15. Source: The Integrator Operable Unit at SRS: Regulatory ComplianceFocused on Problem Identification, Risk Reduction and Site Resolution; Charles W. Powers, CRESP; June 2000

  16. Radionuclide plumes at Hanford NRC Report on Research Needs in Subsurface Science

  17. Central Plateau buffer zone, as proposed by “extended HAB” + Tri-Party Agencies (approximate)

  18. Proposed Hanford Reach National Monument

  19. Demographic change near Rocky Flats, Colorado From Cleanup to Stewardship, DOE 1999

  20. More than 2 million people live within 50 miles of the Rocky Flats Site (arrow at upper center).

  21. How should we select institutional controls and monitor their performance? Using the concept of vulnerability in remedy selection ERDF Columbia River circa 1950s

  22. Conceptual Model of Vulnerability “High reliability” institutional management SOCIETY-ENVIRONMENT Vulnerability: How could the remedy fail due to threats from the social –environmental system? REMEDY HARM HAZARD THREAT Risk: What might be the harm done to society and the environment given failure?

  23. “Risk is a complex phenomenon that involves both biophysical attributes and social dimensions. Existing assessment and management approaches often fail to consider risk in its full complexity and its social context.” R. Kasperson and J. Kasperson, The social amplification and attenuation of risk, 1996.

  24. Decision Transparency (Decision Mapping System as Institutional Control?)

  25. URL: http://nalu.geog.washington.edu/dms

  26. Policy Forum: Nuclear Waste Yucca Mountain Rodney C. Ewing and Allison Macfarlane “The…decision should be based on a compelling and transparent analysis of…safety. … “The necessary science…requires an analysis that couples atomic-scale processes…to crustal-scale processes…that extend over temporal scales of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years. … Science296 26 April 2002

  27. Policy Forum: Nuclear Waste Yucca Mountain Rodney C. Ewing and Allison Macfarlane “… We can never know whether the repository ‘worked’ as designed. Even with an operating period lasting for hundreds of years and the possibility of an engineered ‘fix’ for problems, we cannot know whether the predicted behavior … matches its actual performance. This would be an unreasonable expectation … ” Science296 26 April 2002

  28. Map of 129 Sites that May Require Long-term Stewardship

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