AK ATOLL ‘h other soil tT tasks. The increase as es could be ed to begin operations, activities. into three The most ' to sustain wer levels icentrated nated soil E assisted ts around Jersonnel ‘oO Sustain s used in dilization cleanup ject. The ces, that ion plan ‘eted on 2ffort to d in the lization ling the <tend it igh the -nd the dation. ‘ithout ea and s of 4 Juince e FigCIJTG Runit (Yvonne) Cleanup and Crater Containment 447 a. Remove all soil, surface and subsurface, above 160 pCi/g of transuranics. Estimated volume was over 9,500 cubic yards. b. Removeall surface contamination above 160 pCi/g to a maximum depth of 40 centimeters (16 inches). This would limit the worst-case volume to 62,920 cubic yards. c. Erect a barrier at the hotline and quarantine North Runit. Permit use of South Runit. d. Dig a wide channel near the hotline to form two islands and quarantine the northern one. Permit use of South Runit. e. Quarantine Runit forever. The Director, DNA requested more IMP data on South Runit before making a decision. !°9,1!0 The matter of Runit soil cleanup, however, was to be overtaken by morepressing developments. At the 12 February 1979 Fission Products Survey Conference, the Director, DNA reaffirmed that 15 April 1980 was an ironclad end date but that “‘If we try to turn away from a job half done, wewill be right back out there redoing the job with more people and morecost.��’!!! A briefing was presented on the status of the cleanup project which indicated it might possibly be completed well before the planned end date. Cleanup and transport of contaminated material from the islands other than Runit was 3 months ahead of the revised schedule. Tremie operations were being completed 2 months ahead of the revised schedule. Less than 12,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil remained in the stockpile or to be transported from the other islands. This would sustain soil-cement operations for slightly more than 2 weeks at the planned rate of 5,000 cubic yards per week. Cleanup of Runit, based on worst case estimates of 60,000 cubic yards, could be completed in only 12 more weeks, or by the end of May 1979, permitting the crater to be capped and demobilization to bestarted a month early (i.e., 15 September instead of 15 October 1979). The only apparent constraint was delivery of cement to sustain the maximum rate of soil-cement containment.!!2 The USAE representative at the conference confirmed that USAE could excise and contain 5,000 cubic yards of soil per week on Runit if they had the cement. The Director, DNA decided to expedite cleanup of Runit soil and to expedite delivery of the cement. At the end of the meeting, the discussion turned to Lujor, which had been cleaned only to visitation level (160 pCi/g), not to agricultural level (80 pCi/g), the use desired by the driEnewetak. The Director then directed the CJTG to develop plans for two options: Cleanup of Runit to 160 pCi/g and Lujor to 80 pCi/g, or cleanup of Runit alone. The initial response from the JTG staff and the USAEto the proposed cleanup of Lujor was pessimistic because of anticipated difficulties with Lujor; ie., channel access, poor beach and. onislandtrafficability, etc.115