While there is no solution yet for permanent disposal of the nation’s most hazardous form of low-level radioactive waste, a small tranche of the material could within a matter of years be moved temporarily to Texas.
The license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for interim storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel at Waste Control Specialists’ disposal facility also covers a couple hundred tons of Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) waste. That aspect of the proposal has largely been overlooked — not unreasonably — in the intense debate over transport and storage of tens of thousands of tons of used fuel assemblies to Texas, and a separate facility in New Mexico.
The NRC is reviewing license applications for consolidated interim storage facilities that would be built and operated by an Orano-Waste Control Specialists partnership in Andrews County, Texas, and by Holtec International in Lea County, N.M. The operations would primarily assist the Department of Energy in meeting its legal mandate to remove what is now roughly 80,000 metric tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants around the nation.
The Texas facility would hold up to 40,000 metric tons of waste. That would include as much as 231.3 metric tons (510,000 pounds) of GTCC waste, according to the latest revision to the safety analysis report attached to the Orano-WCS license application.
At least some of waste would come from retired nuclear plants that would also ship off their used fuel: Rancho Seco in California; Maine Yankee; Connecticut Yankee; Yankee Rowe; and Zion in Illinois. It was not immediately clear whether other generators would also ship their GTCC waste to Texas.
“As we progress through the licensing application process, we’ll be able to provide greater details. But at this point, I can confirm that [our] intent is approval to store both used nuclear fuel and GTCC waste, primarily from the decommissioning of the shutdown nuclear reactors listed in the document,” Curtis Roberts, a spokesman for Orano (formerly French nuclear company AREVA), said by email.
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based energy technology provider, does not plan to store GTCC waste at its facility, which would have a maximum capacity exceeding 100,000 metric tons of material, according to the NRC.
Greater-Than-Class-C waste is any low-level radioactive waste with radionuclide concentrations greater than the limit set by the NRC for Class C waste. It is generated by operations at nuclear power plants and other NRC licensees. While generally not as radioactive as spent fuel, the waste to date has been considered unsuitable for storage in near-surface facilities.
Material sent to Texas would consist of “solid reactor-related waste,” encompassing activated reactor vessels internals and additional in-core instrumentation, the safety analysis report says. The waste would be stored in canisters that are nearly or fully identical to those used for spent fuel and in the same overpacks.
“To the extent possible, the same procedures and individuals with the same training and qualifications as those used in SNF transfer operations are used,” the document says. “The organization, programs, and protective measures in place to ensure safe storage of the SNF remains in place to ensure continued safe storage of the canisterized SNF and the canisterized GTCC waste.”
The Orano-Waste Control Specialists team, formally called Interim Storage Partners, submitted its updated license application in June. The proposal is largely identical to the proposal submitted in 2016 only by WCS, which had been on ice for more than a year at the company’s request. The partners hope to receive their NRC license by 2021 or 2022.
The United States by 2083 is expected to have about 12,000 cubic meters of GTCC and GTCC-like waste, in three forms: activated metals produced in decommissioning of nuclear power plants; sealed sources used in medical, industrial, and oil and gas exploration operations; and other waste such as contaminated scrap metal, filters, soil, and sludge.
The material for now is held by the generators, but the federal government must ultimately give it a permanent home. Last November, the Department of Energy (DOE) filed a report with Congress affirming its preferred disposal method as some combination of “generic commercial facilities” and the deep-underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Today, NRC regulations require that GTCC waste be placed into a geologic repository for disposal, but there is none available yet. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is specifically for disposal of transuranic waste from the DOE nuclear-weapons complex, and the department has yet to meet its congressional directive to build a permanent repository for other commercial and defense nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, in Nye County, Nev., or anywhere else.
Congress would have to take certain steps to authorize the DOE approach for permanent disposal of GTCC waste — for example, authorizing WIPP to hold the material. Such action would not be necessary for interim storage of the waste, the NRC said.
The Energy Department is working with lawmakers to advance potential legislation, “but as of now, the wait continues,” Kara Colton, director of nuclear energy programs at the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Communities Alliance, said by email.
A staffer with the House Energy and Commerce Committee said congressional action might depend first on the NRC providing clarity on pathways for disposal of GTCC waste.
“It’s something that we have had discussions on, but the actual pathway is not anything we’ve had discussions on yet,” the staffer said.
The NRC has been wrestling with this issue at least since 2015, when the state of Texas asked about its authority to issue a license for disposal of GTCC, GTCC-like, and transuranic waste. That led the commission to request NRC staff to prepare a regulatory basis on disposal of GTCC waste via near-surface disposal or separate means other than a deep geologic repository. That document is expected six months after publication of the agency’s Part 61 supplemental proposed rules package on low-level radioactive waste disposal — anticipated in early 2019 — and could lead to a full rule-making.
There are now up to four commercial options for potential near-surface disposal of GTCC material. One of those is operated by Waste Control Specialists on its property, which would be separate from the spent fuel site. The others are US Ecology’s site on DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state, and EnergySolutions’ properties in Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C.
