The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday released a draft environmental assessment for its proposal to treat and dispose of up to 10,000 gallons of recycled wastewater from the Savannah River Siteat a commercial low-level radioactive waste site somewhere outside South Carolina.
This would be the first test run of the DOE’s reinterpretation from June of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste (HLW).
The Energy Department believes the recycled wastewater from the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) could be treated as low-level waste because of its radiological risk. The agency is now inviting comments on this pilot effort and will subsequently either issue a finding of no significant impact, or decide that a more comprehensive environmental impact statement is required.
“This process is part of DOE’s science-based approach to manage radioactive waste and to identify potential off-site disposal options for long-stored reprocessing waste that are fully protective of human health and the environment,” the agency said in a statement released Tuesday when the notice was published in the Federal Register.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management would move the recycled wastewater to a commercial low-level waste facility licensed either by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or one of its agreement states.
The Energy Department is taking comments on the draft for 30 days, through Jan. 9, according to the Federal Register notice.
The agency will also hold a public meeting on the draft document, including a poster session followed by a half-hour presentation, from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17, at the Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center, 2 Tenth St., Augusta, Ga. Instructions on how to access the session via WebEx can be found here.
In its June reinterpretation, which has been roundly criticized by public interest groups, DOE said the definition of high-level waste the Atomic Energy Act and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act means not all wastes from spent fuel reprocessing are highly radioactive – allowing some of it to be disposed of at low-level waste sites.
The nation still lacks a deep underground disposal site for high-level waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., or anywhere else, leaving most of it stranded at DOE facilities such as Savannah River, the Hanford Site in Washington state, and the Idaho National Laboratory.
