The U.S. Energy Department is again delaying issuance of a draft record of decision (ROD) for its proposed new 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
The document had been due Monday. A DOE spokesman said by email Monday the ROD’s release was pushed back another month, until Oct. 31.
It was the second straight monthly delay: Representatives of DOE’s nuclear cleanup office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of Tennessee previously agreed to postpone an Aug. 30 release in order to seek agreement on regulating landfill wastewater effluents containing radionuclides.
The three parties want the issued resolved before a ROD is issued, and are continuing to discuss the issue, Kim Schofinski, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said in a Monday email.
The EPA’s Atlanta-based Region 4 wants to implement far tougher standards for this type of runoff than those at either government or commercial facilities elsewhere in the country, Jay Mullis, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, argued in a letter filed with EPA leadership.
The new landfill, dubbed the Environmental Management Disposal Facility, would replace the nearly full Environmental Management Waste Management Facility. Like the existing facility, the new landfill would be located in the Bear Creek Valley at Oak Ridge. It would take low-level radioactive and mixed waste from cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Estimated life-cycle project costs for on-site disposal range from $732 million to $928 million, the Energy Department has said. The agency expects to produce a more specific estimate in the future.
The existing facility will be filled in the 2020s, mainly with debris from demolition of buildings at the East Tennessee Technology Park, which is the location of the K-25 gaseous diffusion operations during the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
Oak Ridge is a Superfund site under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and the record of decision would authorize construction of the new landfill and describe DOE’s reasoning for the project. Issuance of a final ROD would commit the Energy Department to constructing the facility to standards that would protect the environment and public health and safety.
For fiscal 2020, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s has requested a status update on the ROD and cost data comparing the relative expense of disposing of the waste on-site versus shipping it to another state.
A 2014 Energy Department presentation on the existing landfill says the facility probably avoided $500 million in off-site disposal costs during its first 10 years of operation.
