Environmental Assessment Related to Hanford Radioactive Waste Burial

摘要

About 190 thousand cubic meters of solid wastes contaminated with two million cureies of radioactive fission products and transuranium isotopes have been buried at Hanford since the project started in 1943. Burial practices and site characteristics that are important to isolating radioactive wastes from the biosphere are summarized in this article. Assessments to data indicate that burial practices have effectively prevented environmental contamination, and that the potential dissolution and transport of radionuclides from buried wastes by rainfall or snowmelt at Hanford become vanishingly small. (ERA citation 03:039336)