This plan has been developed by Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC), and its subcontractors ICF Kaiser Hanford (ICF KH) and BCS Richland, Inc. (BCSR), at the direction of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Richland Operations Office (RL). WHC and its subcontractors are hereafter referred to as the Maintenance and Operations (M and O) Contractor. The plan identifies actions involving the M and O Contractor that are critical to (1) prepare for a smooth transition to the Project Hanford Management Contractor (PHMC), and (2) support and assist the PHMC and RL in achieving transition as planned, with no or minimal impact to ongoing baseline activities. The plan is structured around two primary phases. The first is the pre-award phase, which started in mid-February 1996 and is currently scheduled to be completed on June 1, 1996, at which time the contract is currently planned to be awarded. The second is the follow-on four-month post-award phase from June 1, 1996, until October 1, 1996. Considering the magnitude and complexity of the scope of work being transitioned, completion in four months will require significant effort by all parties. To better ensure success, the M and O Contractor has developed a pre-award phase that is …

This document summarizes the sampling activities for tank 241-BX-109. This report contains tables of the analytical results on total organic compounds and total inorganic compounds in the radioactive wastes. Tank 241-BX-109 has not been on a Watch List.

Washington Administration Code 173-303-300 requires that a waste analysis plan (WAP) be provided by a treatment, storage, and/or disposal (TSD) unit to confirm their knowledge about a dangerous and/or mixed waste to ensure that the waste is managed properly. The specific objectives of the WAP are as follows: Ensure safe management of waste during treatment and storage; Ensure that waste generated during operational activities is properly designated in accordance with regulatory requirements; Provide chemical and physical analysis of representative samples of the waste stored for characterization and/or verification before the waste is transferred to another TSD unit; Ensure compliance with land disposal restriction (LDR) requirements for treated waste; and Provide basis for work plans that describes waste analysis for development of new treatment technologies.

This document describes planned testing with Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT). It is prepared in support of TTP RL46WT51 Rev. 1, funded by the Tank Focus Area through the Office of Technology Integration. The primary goal of the testing for fiscal year 1996 (FY96) is to develop and demonstrate the ability to place vertical electrode arrays (VEA) with the cone penetrometer technology (CPT) to depths below existing single shell tanks (SST) at the DOE Hanford Site. It is desirable to have the capability to use CPT for this application for obvious reasons. First, current methods of emplacement, drilled boreholes, are expensive with respect to the rest of the ERT operation. Cone penetrometer VEA emplacements offer the opportunity to significantly reduce installation costs. Second, use of CPT will reduce emplacement time from weeks or months to just several days depending on the number of VEAs and the depth of placement. ERT is preferable to other monitoring methods since operation costs and turn around time are less than the current baselines of either groundwater sampling networks or borehole logging techniques. ERT cost savings can be substantial and will continue into the future. ERT can also provide complete coverage under a tank or other …

Numerous sites within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex have been contaminated with various radioactive and hazardous materials by defense-related activities during the post-World War II era. The perception is that characterization and remediation of these contaminated sites will be too costly using currently available technology. Consequently, the DOE Office of Technology Development has funded development of a number of alternative processes for characterizing and remediating these sites. The former Feed-Materials Processing Center near Fernald, Ohio (USA), was selected for demonstrating several innovative technologies. Contamination at the Fernald site consists principally of particulate uranium and derivative compounds in surficial soil. A field-characterization demonstration program was conducted during the summer of 1994 specifically to demonstrate the relative economic performance of seven proposed advanced-characterization tools for measuring uranium activity of in-situ soils. These innovative measurement technologies are principally radiation detectors of varied designs. Four industry-standard measurement technologies, including conventional, regulatory-agency-accepted soil sampling followed by laboratory geochemical analysis, were also demonstrated during the program for comparative purposes. A risk-based economic-decision model has been used to evaluate the performance of these alternative characterization tools. The decision model computes the dollar value of an objective function for each of the different characterization approaches. The …

In this study equilibrium adsorption isotherms were determined for two petroleum asphaltenes, AAD-1 and AAK-1, and one coal asphaltene, called No. 97500. Isotherms were determined for three different temperatures, namely 20, 35 and 50{degrees}C. The experimental data for the petroleum asphaltenes were fitted with a Freundlich isotherm. For the coal asphaltene a Freundlich isotherm was used to fit the experimental data for lower concentrations; however, for higher concentrations a linear isotherm fitted the experimental data better. The coal asphaltene showed a tendency to form multilayers on the catalyst surface. Upon comparison of the adsorption isotherms for the three different temperatures, an interesting effect was observed. Although a decrease of the asphaltenes adsorption for higher temperatures was expected, the adsorption as a function of the temperature in fact showed a maximum for the petroleum asphaltenes and a minimum for the coal asphaltenes. This interesting and unexpected behavior was speculated to be due to the formation of micelles in the coal asphaltene solution and the different dependence of micelle formation and adsorption on temperature. Comparing the adsorption isotherms for the three different asphaltenes revealed that the adsorption of the coal asphaltenes was initially lower than the adsorption of the petroleum asphaltenes, but …

This report summarizes results on experiments testing the feasibility of detecting illegal drugs using passive infrared spectroscopy in the 8-13 micrometer spectral band.

Many simple (without thermal effects) ground-water flow models have been used for analysis of water resource problems since the 1960`s. The emphasis on more complicated ground-water flow models began to shift with the focus on waste management problems during the 1970`s. The ground-water flow model development has shifted to unsaturated flow models because the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain was selected as a potential high-level radioactive waste disposal site. Many unsaturated flow models have been developed and used since the mid-1980`s. A few unsaturated flow models have also been developed in the 1990`s. Under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System Management and Operating Contractor (CRWMS M&O) has the responsibility to review, evaluate, and document the existing computer models; to conduct performance assessments; and to develop performance assessment models, where necessary. Two major regulatory requirements are the main criteria for selection of ground-water flow models in the unsaturated zone. One is of calculating the pre-emplacement ground-water travel time. Our work has focused on visualization techniques, and experiments that could have more application quantitatively. Many studies are summarized in this report.