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DOE nuclear cleanup costs, schedule delays continue to rise, GAO says
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management faces significant cost increases, schedule delays, and data management issues in completing nuclear waste cleanup projects, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
George Emanuel*
Nuclear Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | December 1980 | Pages 238-243
Technical Paper | Argonne National Laboratory Specialists’ Workshop on Basic Research Needs for Nuclear Waste Management / Isotopes Separation | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of small isotope enrichment cascades that have large separation factors is examined. A quantity called the separative work gain is derived under the assumption of a small inlet assay. This concept simplifies the determination of optimum separation factors, and verifies the common practice of using the same values for these factors for each stage in a cascade. Simple relations are provided for a non-ideal, counter-current cascade of arbitrary size. They are utilized to determine a pricing strategy and to estimate a value for the U.S. stockpile of diffusion plant UF6 tailings. The value depends on the separation factors and cost of separative work, but may well be several billion dollars.