The Department of Energy has implemented all 34 corrective actions required by a June 2021 settlement agreement over mislabeled waste sent to the Nevada National Security Site from the Y-12 National Security Site in Tennessee, officials said last week.
Completion of enhanced waste verification at the Nevada Site, before and after waste arrives, was noted during a July 18 meeting of a federal advisory board by Christine Andres, federal facilities bureau chief for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, as well as Robert Boehlecke, a manger with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
Closeout of the settlement became official with a June 27 state letter to Boehlecke and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) field office manager David Bowman. “That was kind of a big, big milestone for all of us,” Andres said.
The improved waste inspection standards and other steps called for in the settlement grew out of a discovery that, for years, Y-12 had sent mislabeled radioactive waste shipments to the Nevada Site’s Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Complex.
There were a total of 32 containers of radioactive waste, mislabeled as low-level waste when it should have been labeled as mixed low-level, sent to Nevada from Y-12, DOE officials said in 2019.