The Energy Department is giving interested parties more time to weigh in on the proposed new interpretation of high-level radioactive waste (HLW).
The public comment deadline has been pushed back from Dec. 10 to Jan. 9, according to a DOE notice Tuesday in the Federal Register. Comments can be emailed to [email protected].
After the department began taking comments in October, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and dozens of advocacy groups last month asked Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White for an extension of 120 days.
The Atomic Energy Act and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act currently define high-level waste as “the highly radioactive material resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste produced directly in reprocessing and any solid material derived from such liquid waste that contains fission products in sufficient concentrations.”
The agency seeks to modify its interpretation so that reprocessing waste would not be classified as high-level if it meets one of two standards. Either it would not exceed concentration limits for Class C low-level radioactive waste or it would not require disposal in a deep geologic repository.
White has articulated the DOE position that HLW should be classified more on its radioactive traits and less on its site of generation. The agency has said such a change could speed final disposal of some high-level waste. Federal and industry representatives have indicated that some material now treated as HLW could be treated as transuranic waste and shipped to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The waste potentially affected by the change is held at the Hanford Site in Washington state, Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Idaho National Laboratory, and the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state. Under the approach set by 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the material would be placed at a repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, that facility has not been licensed much less built and remains vehemently opposed by Nevada state leaders.
White addressed the issue during a recent speech to a DOE intergovernmental group in New Orleans. “I am glad to see the Department moving the discussion on this forward after so many reports and recommendations from outside groups, including ECA [the Energy Communities Alliance],” White said. The comment period is “the first step in a process that must comply with existing regulatory requirements and law,” she added. White’s comments from the speech were included in a weekly publication from her office.
In her speech, White said she hopes the current public comment period will eventually lead to “possible options to better manage and dispose of waste that has been stored at sites for decades with no near-term path forward.”
The Energy Department has also said that just because it is taking comments on a revised interpretation it has not decided to actually make any changes.
ECA Director of Nuclear Energy Policy Kara Colton said Thursday her organization has not yet filed its comments, and will probably take more time crafting them given the deadline extension.
Critics have called for DOE to provide more details on its proposal, including how much waste is currently considered high-level and how much this would change under the revised definition.
Wyden has said DOE is abandoning longstanding policies and legal interpretations if the proposed revision is enacted and, as a result, the process should not be rushed. The Natural Resources Defense Council and a slew of like-minded stakeholder groups agreed, saying in a letter “thorough and thoughtful consideration by all affected parties” is needed.
