C—O Soil Cleanup Planning The Committee listed several ongoing and proposed actions to provide additional information which could improve the confidence of the dose estimates and cleanup criteria for transuranics. They also indicated that plowing might reduce surface soi] concentrations and hence reduce the potential inhalation problem, but that it was unlikely to reduce plant uptake, 83 DOE SOIL CHARACTERIZATION The DOE-ERSP characterization data for the northern islands was forwarded to Field Command on 27 April 1978. It covered al] transuranics, eerRe Brey cicgt Tr 5 EET ce F ' 7A, 7 eke 7 hy ns “ my Y on A i . j 4," Pat Py 4 > : UTED AeUlipear rweeree , 2 o involving major resource commitments which might have proven to be ill- advised, no serious harm had been done to the overall project by the delay. a ern eer oo ea on eet das contaminated debris cleanup. Since DNA had avoided making decisions neal OS Bids i a A volumes to be excised under various conditions. Some of these estimates were used in updating the Field Command time and mation study for the briefing to be given at the 3-4 May 1978 conference, while others were disregarded due to significant variances with data on hand. The DOE characterization had taken 9 months to complete. In general, it confirmed what had been indicated in the 1972 radiological survey, AEC Task Group recommendations, EIS, CONPLAN, and OPLAN. Five islands required removal of plutonium concentrations to permit their use as planned by the dri-Enewetak: Aomon, Boken, Enjebi, Lujor, and Runit. None of the eight case-by-case islands required any soil cleanup. Nine other northern islands, not previouslyidentified for soil cleanup, also had been characterized and found with no contamination above 40 pCi/g. DOE-ERSP’s estimates of the volumes of soil 10 be removed from the four islands named in the EIS to permit the planned use was approximately 72,000 cubic yards. The EIS estimate for those islands was 79,000 cubic yards. The DOE-ERSP estimate for the fifth island, Enjebi, was 44,835 cubic yards to qualify it for residential use.84 These estimates were reassuring to the planners since they indicated that volumes of soil previously esumated to be moved would not be materially affected by the inclusion of all transuranics, which had not been previously considered. Regarding the time utilized for the soil characterization, it should be noted that the advanced techniques developed by DOE-NV for this complex task and the new equipment fabricated from research and development components were truly remarkable. To field this effort in the distant, harsh Enewetak environment—~and to put it on a paying basis relatively quickly— was quite an achievement. The soil cleanup project had been delayed, but this had been compensated for by a speedup in gf a: while the EIS covered plutonium only, and it included estimates of soil