PHOENIX — Unwilling states could be forced to regulate Greater-Than-Class-C waste under a pending federal rule change, the head of an interest group for states that regulate low-level radioactive waste said here.
States that took on responsibility for regulating low-level radioactive waste under agreements with the NRC “are all very, very concerned about what GTCC [Greater-Than-Class-C] means to their programs,” Daniel Shrum, executive director for the Richland, Wash.-based Low-Level Radioactive Waste Forum.
NRC’s combined rulemaking on GTCC and low-level waste, which the public will not get to read until after NRC staff submit it to the commission in May, would modify Title 10, Part 61 of the Code of Federal Regulations to clarify that states that have an NRC agreement to regulate radioactive materials may regulate GTCC, a sort of high-level low-level waste, too.
Part 61 sets NRC’s rules for operating low-level radioactive waste disposal sites, as South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington state all do, and Shrum believes that if the rule is changed in the way the commission directed NRC staff to change it, any state that took on responsibility for that type of waste could be forced to take on responsibility for GTCC too.
It is an alarm bell that Shrum, a former EnergySolutions regulatory affairs head, has sounded before and not everyone who participated with him in a technical session here at the Waste Management Symposia agreed with his position.
“Staff said to the commission and the commission is proceeding to direct the rulemaking that agreements states could regulate GTCC,” Larry Camper, a former NRC division head who worked on the commission’s low-level waste reforms, told Shrum during a question-and-answer session at the end of Monday’s technical discussion. “That does not mean that a state will choose to regulate GTCC.”
A current NRC staffer, Maurice Heath, said Camper’s argument against Shrum’s “was good,” but stopped short of clarifying what the proposed rule change actually says.
Instead, Heath urged anyone who shared the concerns Shrum raised to submit public comments about the proposed combined rule, which would be published in the Federal Register after the commission accepts it.
I would urge those [comments],” said Heath. “That’s going to better inform us and make the rule better.”
GTCC is a legal category that includes activated metals from nuclear power reactors, sealed sources, waste from manufacturing of radioisotope products, and material from DOE’s West Valley Demonstration Project cleanup in New York state.
The NRC’s proposed rulemaking, according to information staff has shared about it to date, would allow for near-surface disposal of most types of GTCC.
