Proposed site selection criteria for hazardous waste disposal facilities in Iraq

Abstract

Hazardous wastes in Iraq can be considered as a looming crisis due to its severe impact on health and environment after the 1991 and 2003 wars. The most dangerous type is depleted uranium waste. It is classified by EU and USEPA as Low-Level radioactive Waste and a simple and sufficiently safe way of isolating it from the biosphere is to turn it into a landfill confined within tight dikes. Selection of a disposal site requires a number of conditions to be fulfilled, like socio/economic, environmental and geotechnical criteria, which, in combination, determine where such landfills can be located. This is particularly obvious for Iraq, with its large desertic areas that are available for constructing landfills of hazardous waste. The climatic conditions are suitable and the deep groundwater level valuable for minimizing or avoiding contamination of the area. Heavy rain may occasionally fall requiring special measures to be taken for maintaining stability and tightness. This paper lists suitable site selection criteria for landfills of hazardous waste with special respect to Iraq. An example of a suitable disposal site is described and assessed.

Regional scale screening of selected regions of Bangladesh to identify potential sites for the disposal of low and intermediate level radioactive waste

“…5 Social/ economical Buildingsfacilities-build up areas (area) (km) A waste disposal site for hazardous waste such as soil contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) should be located at least 500 m away from the permanently populated area [21]. The protection of cultural heritage from RW repository should be maintained [22].…”

“…Electric power is important facility meaning that the distance to power transmission lines is a parameter to be considered but very close to transmission line may increase risk associated with high-voltage [21]. Therefore, 200 m buffer distance was assigned a rating of zero.…”

Natural smectitic soils for protective liners in arid climate

“…In Iraq, this option, which represents cost-effective and sufficiently safe disposal of dangerous waste, can also be adopted for disposing DU-contaminated soil and military scrap emanating from the 1991 and 2003 wars (Bertell, 2006;IAEA, 2010). These structures can preferably be located in Iraqi deserts, which make up 60% of the country and are ideal for hosting NSRs of radioactive waste (Al-Taie et al, 2012;Al-Taie et al, 2013). The design principle in Fig.…”

Isolation of hazardous soil contaminated by DU (depleted uranium) from groundwater

“…Theoretical modelling for finding optimal densities and thicknesses of the various components of a top liner can lead to an ideal design but in practice quite other parameters determine the choice of clay material [1]. Thus, access to and cost of suitable clay materials are decisive, which has called for extensive investigation of the performance of natural smectite-poor clays and of mixtures of suitably graded "ballast", i.e.…”

“…A superior technique is to construct the landfill on the ground surface, separating it from the ground for eliminating uptake of water from below, and to equip it with a capping that minimizes uptake and percolation of water from above. This principle is being proposed for isolation of hazardous waste in the form of DUcontaminated soil in Iraq [1]. The present paper deals with the evolution of top clay liners with respect to the transient degree of hydration and to their hydraulic buffering capacity [2][3][4].…”