The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) wants a heads-up before the Energy Department transfers a problematic batch of transuranic waste from a commercial storage facility in Texas to a DOE defense nuclear site such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Moreover, according to a letter dated July 29 from DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the board wants to know if DOE does anything to the waste before it ships.
“[W]e request that you notify us prior to transfer of this RNS waste to any defense nuclear facility, “ Connery wrote in the letter, which was published on DNFSB’s website. “This notification should include relevant information regarding processing, remediation, or treatment done prior to transportation.”
Stored at Waste Control Specialists’ facility near Andrews, Texas, since 2014, the waste in question originated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and is similar to the improperly packaged batch that burst open at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in 2014 and spread radiation into the mine.
The quasi-independent DOE watchdog would not say whether anything in particular prompted the board to prod the agency about the LANL waste now.
“With the expiration of the two year deadline approaching, the Board’s letter seeks to ensure that we be notified prior to any transfer of the RNS waste to any defense nuclear facility,” DNFSB spokeswoman Nora Khalil wrote in a Thursday email. Asked whether DOE had assured the board of its compliance, Khalil said it was “a little too soon to expect a response,” given that the letter was only mailed July 29.
According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 74 containers of this LANL transuranic waste are stored at Waste Control Specialists’ Federal Waste Facility. Within the containers are what DOE has officially dubbed RNS, for “improperly remediated nitrate salts.” The salts were mixed with organic kitty litter by a DOE subcontractor at LANL, and a chemical reaction between the two substances later caused the small explosion that burst the container at WIPP.
DNFSB has no regulatory jurisdiction over Waste Control Specialists’ Texas site, which is regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A 2014 NRC order allows Waste Control Specialists to store the LANL waste only until Dec. 23, 2016. In March, the company requested a two-year extension from NRC because WIPP will not begin accepting new waste shipments until some time in 2017.
In a Tuesday email, NRC spokesperson Maureen Conley said the agency has not yet decided whether to grant the request, and that “we do not have a precise schedule for doing so. We will respond to WCS in writing when we do.”
The Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, meanwhile, at least “has not made any decision to prohibit longer storage of transuranic waste at Waste Control Specialists,” commission spokesman Andrew Keese said by email Thursday.
Besides permission from the NRC and Texas, Waste Control Specialists will also need an extension on its LANL waste storage contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership: DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP operations.
The contract, awarded in 2014, runs through March 2017 and would be worth $25.4 million, if Nuclear Waste Partnership exercises the contract’s last remaining six-month option. The current option, the third on the contract, expires Sept. 30.
“Nuclear Waste Partnership is not currently negotiating contract modifications with Waste Control Specialists,” company spokesman Donavan Mager said by email Thursday. “Should a contract extension be needed it will be negotiated prior to the expiration of the existing contract”
