This investigation was initiated to address a concern expressed by the Department of Energy's Low Level Waste Disposal Facility Federal Review Group (LFRG) Review Team during their review of the 2008 E-Area Performance Assessment (PA) [13]. The concern was the potential for overlapping of atmospheric plumes, emanating from the soil surface above SRS LLW disposal facilities within the E-Area, to contribute to the dose received by a member of the public during the Institutional Control (IC) period. The implication of this concern was that the dose to the maximally-exposed individual (MEI) located at the SRS boundary might be underestimated during this time interval. To address this concern a re-analysis of the atmospheric pathway releases from E-Area was required. A new atmospheric release model (ARM) capable of addressing the LFRG plume overlap concern was developed.The conceptual approach to assessing the atmospheric dose to a member of the public from E-Area LLW disposal facilities is to perform sub-surface simulations of the release of volatile radionuclides from the waste zones through the overlying engineered barriers to determine a flux rate at the land surface. Then, atmospheric dispersion of the radionuclide flux is simulated in an atmospheric transport model [1] to compute air concentrations in the vicinity of the hypothetically exposed individual. A re-analysis of this portion of the atmospheric pathway releases was not undertaken in this SA, however the Dose Release Factors (DRF's) computed in a separate study [ 9] were retained to convert the new surface emanation fluxes (computed with the ARM) into doses received by the MEI at the appropriate points of compliance (POC). In this way, the dose received by the MEI could be compared to the maximum permissible dose level, defined in DOE Order 435.1 [5] as being 10 mrem/yr.
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