A local advisory board this week voiced its opposition to using the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina for interim storage of nuclear waste, but could not come to agreement on a request for DOE to prohibit shipments to the facility of highly enriched uranium from Germany.
The Energy Department should “not consider SRS as a reasonable consolidated interim storage location for EM spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste pending establishment of a permanent geologic repository,” the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) said in a recommendation approved in a 16-6-1 vote at its bimonthly meeting Tuesday.
Congress and DOE have for years studied options for consolidating nuclear waste now housed at facilities across the country until a final storage site can be built. A private group in South Carolina in 2016 announced plans to apply for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for interim storage. but by this year had abandoned that approach. The industry’s focus has been on licensing of planned private facilities in New Mexico and Texas, though the latter NRC application from Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists is currently on hold. The Energy Department has not ruled out interest in other possible proposals.
The Trump administration is intent on securing $150 million in DOE and NRC funding for fiscal 2018 to revive the licensing process for the planned Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada, which its predecessor had abandoned. The House of Representatives has effectively met the administration’s request in its energy appropriations bill, while Senate appropriators included no money for Yucca Mountain.
The CAB recommendation also asks DOE to “stabilize and remove” the roughly 2,700 bundles of foreign and domestic spent fuel currently stored at SRS as quickly as possible. This is critical to preventing the Savannah River Site from becoming a permanent waste disposal facility for DOE’s spent fuel stockpiles, according to the board. Currently, SRS is not being considered for such storage, but the advisory panel has said it wants to make its position clear.
Meanwhile, the board tabled a recommendation that asks the Energy Department to discontinue efforts to bring highly enriched uranium from Germany to the site near Aiken, S.C.
The Savannah River Site could receive 900 kilograms of nuclear weapon-grade uranium, which would arrive in the form of 1 million graphite spheres, each about the size of a tennis ball. The material dates to 1953 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the Atoms for Peace program, under which HEU produced in the U.S. was sent to several other countries for research purposes. The material was used in German research reactors and is now considered spent fuel. Per the terms of the program, the United States is supposed to take it back, but DOE is considering an option to take no action and let the material remain in Germany.
In its recommendation, the CAB asked DOE to select the “No Action” option. “U.S. receipt and processing of the German SNF is not needed for US nuclear nonproliferation goals, therefore the purpose and need for the proposal is lacking,” the board said in its draft recommendation.
The issue has been hotly debated over the past three years. CAB member Larry Powell on Monday said a recent meeting of one of the board’s committees produced more than 160 letters of comment, with many community members opposing receipt of the material. The CAB debated the recommendation on Monday, with some members saying SRS is the only place capable of disposing of the material via processing at its H Canyon facility into a less harmful form. The final product would be stored at Savannah River until the federal government secures a long-term repository for nuclear waste. It is unclear how much the effort would cost, but Germany would pay for the entire project.
Currently, H Canyon is not receiving additional nuclear materials while the Department of Energy addresses an issue with concrete degradation at the facility.
Citizens Advisory Board member Nina Spinelli said it was in the board’s best interest to consider the recommendation at a committee meeting, and then bring it back for consideration at the next full CAB meeting in September. Fellow member John McMichael said the board wants more information on the German fuel issue, including the risks of leaving the material in Germany. “We also want to learn more about Germany’s role in the matter,” he said. “I think these are things that can be figured out in short order.”
Separately, the CAB voted unanimously to urge the Energy Department to step up efforts to regulate drone flights over SRS, following 12 sightings of unmanned aerial systems reported from June 19 to July 22, 2017. Since then, CAB members and the community they represent have been concerned because the federal government still has not figured out who is flying the drones.
The recommendation asks DOE to “continue to work with needed authorities to understand and implement the best use of air space over the site, to protect site activities and workers.”
Once the CAB approves a recommendation, the measure is sent to DOE headquarters for consideration. From there, the department decides if it will fully or partially implement the measure, or deny it.
