Documents Containing Operating Hanford Separations Processes, 1944-1972

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DOCUMENTS CONTAINING OPERATING DATA FOR HANFORD SEPARATIONS PROCESSES, 1944-1972 Hanford Environmental Dose .- Letter report prepared for the Technical Steering Panel and the Centers for Disease Control under Pacific Northwest Laboratories

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The primary objective of the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR) Project is to estimate the radiation dose (with descriptions of the uncertainties inherent in such estimates) that individuals could have received as a result of emissions since 1944 from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site near Richland, Washington. An independent Technical Steering Panel directs the project which is conducted by Battelle Pacific Northwest A secondary objective is to make Hanford-Site-originated documents o f potential interest and use available to the public through the U.S. Government's National Technical Information Service and the DOE Richland Field Office (RL) Public Reading Room, Richland, Washington. The HEDR Project work is conducted under several technical and administrative tasks, among which are the Source Terms Task and the Information Resources Task. Under the Source Terms Task, estimates o f radioactive emissions from Hanford facilities since 1944 are developed. These estimates are based on historical measurements and production information. The Information Resources Task identifies, searches for, retrieves, declassifies (if necessary), and makes available to HEDR staff and the public those documents essential to meet project needs. Project information needs center around 1) information necessary to estimate doses people may have received and 2) information requested by the public on operational and

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The purpose of this etter report is to identify documents that record batch, daily, or selected monthly separations processes operating information at the Hanford Site for the years 1944-1972. The information found in these documents is needed to develop the source terms necessary to make dose estimates. The documents have been identified, located, declassified if necessary, evaluated, and made available to the HEDR Project in general, the HEDR Task 03 (Source Terms) in particular, and the public. Complete bibliographic citations and some sample pages from the Hanford separations processes documents are included. This report and an earlier report (one listing those documents from 1944-1971 which address daily operating data for :the single-pass reactors) (Gydesen 1992a) fulfill the information resource needs for HEDR Task 03 to . develop the source terms necessary to make dose estimates. The documents identified in this report may be of significant value t o other Hanford-Site activities requiring operating information. Consequently, it is recommended that they be identified as historical records for permanent

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2.0 QUALITY ASSURANCE AND DATA QUALITY OBJECTIVES .......... 4.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION ................. APPENDIX - SAMPLE PAGES FROM HANFORD SEPARATIONS PROCESSES

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Hanford Separations Processes with Startup and Shutdown Documents Containing Operating Data from the Bismuth Phosphate Process at the B and T Plants, Documents Containing Operating Data from the REDOX Process 3.4 Documents Containing Operating Data from the PUREX Process at the A Plant, 1956-1972 ................ 3.6 3.5 REDOX and PUREX Monthly Reports, 1952-1972 ........... 3.10

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The primary objective of the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR) Project is to estimate the radiation doses that individuals could have received as a result of emissions since 1944 from the U.S. Department o f Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site near Richland, Washington. estimation is to calculate source terms--the quantities of radionuclides that were released to the environment from various Hanford operations. ties of each radionuclide available for release at any time are a function of the irradiation history of the fuel, the time elapsed since the fuel was removed from the reactor, and the amount of irradiated fuel being dissolved. The first step i n dose To calculate source terms, two types of information are needed: 1) facilities operation information necessary to xal cu late amounts o f radioactive materials generated and released t o the environment and 2) monitoring information indicating concentrations of radioactive materials in the environs and how those concentrations were measured or calculated. sibilities of the Information Resources Task is to identify and retrieve .- historical production operating information for developing source terms. One of the responThe purpose of this letter report is to identify documents that record the operating information on batch, daily, or selected monthly separations processes at the Hanford Site for the years 1944-1972. containing information about separations processes operations are listed here. A similar listing addressing operation of the single-pass Hanford reactors (Gydesen 1992a) was published earlier. The time periods of the data needed by the various HEDR models are detailed in a July 1992 letter report (Shipler a n d

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2 . 0 OUALITY ASSURANCE AND DATA OUALITY OBJECTIVES Data quality objectives (DQO) were established in FY 1992 task plans for the Informatiqn Resources Task. For this activity, completeness and representativeness were the only data quality objectives identified in the task process to review currently available subject, author, periodical, and serial indices o f archival documents for those of interest to the project. Achievement of these data quality objectives was to be addressed at the completion of each search effort or report. The approach to achieve these objectives is to use the search tree Completeness and representativeness were included as data qual i ty objecAchievement o f these DQOs has been satistives to ensure that any discovery of additional information would not alter the project reconstructed results. fied by the internal peer reviews performed by the source term task leader and the line manager o f the author. The line manager's review ensures that the development of the search trees was sufficient for this particular activity and the source term task leader's review ensures that the required information has been provided to him to perform the necessary reconstructed release information for the source term model.

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The process used (Shipler 1991) to collect the documents which contain operating information for Hanford separation processes for the period 1944-1972 included the following activities: screening author, subject, periodical, and serial indices and other computer-generated lists physically looking for documents acquiring documents from their filed, stored, or reading documents to determine content and reading o f documents by 'an Authorized Derivative Oeclassifier to determine whether the document could be declassified as is or declassified with certain information deleted in accordance with directives from originating agencies processing and placing documents i n the RL Public Reading Room in Richland and other publicly avai 1 ab1 e coll ecti ons of the National Technical In the course o f retrieving the separations processes documents created from 1944-1972, it was discovered that some of the documents no longer existed. Older documents especially had been destroyed over the years when the storage retention dates assigned to them in accordance with the government's records disposition schedule were reached or exceeded. This was the case for many daily operating records from 1951 forward. Consequently, for most years,.-only monthly data could be retrieved for the reduction/oxidation The verification o f document destruction is on file record cards which are located i n one oftwo places: the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories Classified Matter Control Center or the Boeing Computer Services Rich1 and Records Holding Area. All data originated prior to 1972 that are necessary the Source Terms Task today were classified. All classified documents were

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assigned numbers, and the destruction of documents w i t h assigned numbers always was recorded on the f i l e records cards. are assured t h a t there are no destroyed data necessary t o the Source Terms Task that have-not been identified. Consequently, Battelle staff Another aspect of the document retrieval t o be addressed was that many of the documents sought were classified. used and made available t o the public, they needed t o be declassified. declared t h a t Hanford plutonium production and operations-re1 ated information generated between 1944-1972 coul d be decl assi f i ed. I n order far these documents t o be During 1944-1972 there were three Hanford-Si t e separations processes, one of which was used a t two separate plants--the B Plant and the T Plant. From these three separations processes, Battelle. .s taff compiled three sets of startup and shutdown dates through 1972. Table 3.1 provides an overview of the separations processes, their Tables 3.2, 3.3, and 3 . 4 provide the TABLE 3 . 1 . Hapford Separations Processes with Startup and Shutdown Dates Bismuth Phosphate Process December 1944 March 1956 Bismuth Phosphate Process April 1945 July 1952 ( * ) The PUREX Plant was reactivated i n 1983 and shut down again in 1989. (a) The initial authorizing guiaance to review those documents generated from 1944 through 1960 for declassification was given in DOE memorandum. Change Notice No. 2 to CG-PR-2, dated February 21. 1990. from A . Bryan Siebert. Director. Office o f Classification. DOE-HQ. Washinaton. 0.C The second authorizing guidance t o review documents generated from 1961 through 1972 for declassification was yvev in DOE memorandum. PR-24 Declassification of Hanford Production and Fuel Cladding Technology. aatea April 6. 1992. from Roger Heusser for A . Bryan Siebert. Direcror. Office o f Classification. DOE-HC.

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listings of these separations processes documents. Additional information relative to the design of site facilities and some of the significant events during the early years of operation can be found i n the history of site operations by Ballinger and Hall (1991). Documents which contain information for the Bismuth Phosphate Process a t These dissolve r batches are For those time frames when informathe B Plant and T Plant a represented in Table 3.2. dissolve r batches were identified by run number. commonly referred to as metal histories. tion by run number no longer exists, documents giving the best available monthly averages are identified. includes for each year these plants were operating the year, document number, (when known), number o f pages, and remarks which explain either the periodicity of the document or its destruction. The listing of documents i n Table 3.2 to fill this 14-week that the Du Pont S Department weekly reports for August 31, 1946 have been destroyed. gap will be discussed in detail in the forthcoming HEDR releases from the Hanford Site, 1944-1947 (Milestone When General Electric Company assumed the contract for operation of Hanford i n September 1946, they created metal histories for the B Plant and T Plant. The logs for General Electric’ s 1951 and 1952 metal histories were destroyed in 1967. Only monthly data still exist for calendar year 1951 for forB Plant.-from January through most o f March 1952 (HW-4683T, Table 3.2). batch or daily dissolve r data are available for B Plant from April through metal history still exist for the years 1952 through 1955 (HWN-4684T and FTSMarch 1956. The T Plant was shut down i n March of that year. There are limited batch dissolve r data B Plant was shut down in July 1952. T Plant dissolving data and No batch or daily data are available for January through Bat tell e staff compared the available batch and daily data through 1947 with the data for the comparable period found inJ. L. Jaech ‘ s monthly summary

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corroborative information.This can, in turn, be crosschecked utilizing data i n what has recently become known as the Anderson notebook (Roberts 1957). This notebook.was also used to record data on the quantities and location of the stored wastes. Jaech ’ s monthly summary presents excellent In addition, the compilation of data in the document, Selected Monthly Operating Data f o r 6 and T Plants, REDOX and PUREX (1944-1972) (Gydesen 1992c), isin very good agreement with that presented in the Anderson notebook (Roberts 1957). The Anderson notebook data were used to generate the document (Anderson 1974) that gives values for gaseous wastes discharged to the atmosphere from 1944-1972. The collection of reactor and separations data from 1944-1972 (Jung f lei sch 1985) provides another excel 1 ent monthly source of data on all separations plants from startup to shutdown. The Information Resources Task of the HEDR Project was unable t o identify logbooks containing information by dissolve r batch for either REDOX o r PUREX. Records of this nature were kept by the Chemical Processing Depart-. ment, but they were destroyed by 1969 because a need for further retention had not been established. However, this batch data is not necessary to calculate dose. I t was determined that source term estimation for REDOX and PUREX from 1952-1972 would be based on monthly averages(Ship ler and Napier 1992). The most complete and reliable summary of dissolve r data (Jaech 1957) for REDOX and PUREX addresses their operations from startup but only through June 30, 1957. The Anderson notebook (Roberts1957), the compilation of chemical processing statistics (Gydesen 1992c), and the fuel irradiation and separations data(Jung f le isch 1985) give data by the month from startup through s hd down for both REDOX and PUREX. Tables 3.3 and 3.4 identify existing documents specific to REDOX and PUREX. tables do not present the continuity that was possible for Table 3.2. I t should be noted that these REDOX and PUREX operating experience and statistics a represented in each Hanford monthly report of the organization that had the responsibility for operation of these plants.A listing of these reports for 1952-1972 i s

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given in Table 3.5. All of these reports in Table 3.5 are in the RL Public Reading Room o r scheduled t o be placed there before the completion ofthe HEDR As an aid.to potential readers, copies of some ofthe pages from documents listed in this report are in the Appendix. t o show the content and quality of typical historical documents to help readers decide whether to request them. These samples are provided

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TABLE 3.5. REDOX and PUREX Monthly Reports, 1952-1972(a) Hanford Works Monthly Reports, General Electric Company - Hanford Atomic Products Operation (200-400 pages each) Chemical Processing Department Monthly Reports, General Electric Company - Hanford Atomic Products Operation (50-75 pages each)

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( a ) Each monthly report includes 2-4 pages which address REDOX and/or PUREX operating experience and

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4.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION Documents containing batch, daily or selected monthly operating data for Hanford separations processes from 1944-1972 have been identified, located, declassified if necessary, evaluated, and made available to the HEDR Project and the public. This report and an earlier report (Gydesen 1992a), listing those documents from 1944-1971 which address daily operating data for the single-pass reactors, fulfill the information resource needs f o r HEDR Task 03 to develop the source terms necessary to make dose estimates. The documents identified in this report may be of significant value t o other Hanford Site activities requiring operating information. Consequently, it is recommended that they be identified as historical records for permanent

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Anderson, J.O. 1974. Emitted and Decayed Values of Radionuclides in Gaseous Wastes Discharged to the Atmosphere from the Separation Facilities through Calendar Year 1972. ARH-3026, Atlantic Richfield Hanford Company, Richland, Ballinger, M.Y., and R.B. Hall. 1991. A History of Major Hanford Operations Involving Radioactive Material. PNL-6964 HEDR, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Gydesen, S.P. 1992a. Letter Report: Title Listing of Daily Operating Data on Hanford Single-Pass Reactors, 1944 …