Management and ranking of US Department of Energy inactive radioactive mixed waste sites

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has long been engaged in a wide variety of operations that generates and disposes of hazardous substances as defined under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or Superfund). Under this act, these DOE inactive waste disposal sites are being evaluated to determine if migration of these substances has occurred and if remediation will be required. The DOE CERCLA program has been formalized into five phases under DOE Order 5480.14. This paper presents an overview of the objectives of each of these phases. However, the focus of this paper is on the first phase of the DOE CERCLA program, installation assessment, covering current DOE efforts to evaluate site histories and records to locate their inactive waste sites that may pose a risk to health, safety, and/or the environment resulting from migration of hazardous and radioactive substances.