The Department of Energy does not know yet what action it will take on its proposed reinterpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste (HLW), Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said last week.
“We don’t have a real distinct schedule on that. Again, we are trying to take our time and be deliberative,” White said on the sidelines of the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz.
The Energy Department’s received 362 comments between Oct. 10 and Jan. 9 that were distinct, rather than “form” comments generated by various stripes of advocacy groups. “We are binning and bucketing them,” White said.
The Office of Environmental Management (EM), charged with remediation of DOE nuclear sites, is working with the department’s General Counsel’s Office to analyze the comments.
While it has not released any details, the agency has said it wants to tweak the definition of high-level radioactive waste to focus primarily on its risk characteristics, rather than its source of origin.
“We are not reclassifying waste … we are making an interpretation,” the nuclear cleanup chief said. Proponents believe focusing on radiological risks puts the United States more in step with some other nations, and offers a more accurate picture of what waste is really high-risk. It could also expedite final disposal of waste.
Whatever happens, “this interpretation does not abrogate our current commitments,” White said. “We still have to stick to the rules” to protect human health and the environment.
During a brief March 4 interview, White said EM continues to work on finalizing a report to Congress on high-level waste management, which was due Feb. 1, 2018, under the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The report should provide more information on how much HLW the department holds, where it is, and how much of it might be treated as something less than high-level based on radioactive traits.
There is no formal connection between the mandatory report and the DOE proposal, although proponents of the reinterpretation say a congressional fix would be more lasting than an agency reinterpretation that could be changed during a subsequent presidential administration.
Congress has said HLW is “highly radioactive” and long-lived nuclear material generated by reprocessing spent fuel.
The 2012 report by the Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future said the Energy Department’s HLW inventory encompasses 90 million gallons of liquids, sludges, and solids left over from nuclear weapons operations. Most of the material is stored at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Laboratory, the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Congress has also said high-level waste must go into a geologic repository, although the Obama administration Energy Department abandoned pursuit of a license for the disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Trump administration has tried to revive the proceeding, but has not yet persuaded Congress to appropriate any funding.
Currently, the nation lacks an underground repository for high-level waste, such as the much-debated Yucca Mountain site. As a result, DOE continues to hold the defense HLW and spent nuclear fuel from commercial power reactors at their points of generation.
The question is whether there is “a better way to manage our reprocessing waste,” Mark Senderling, DOE deputy assistant secretary for waste and materials management, said during a March 5 panel discussion at the conference.
The Energy Department received comments from members of Congress, nonprofits, regulators, tribal members, and individuals, said Theresa Kliczewski, an environmental protection specialist at the DOE cleanup branch.
“We got a lot of comments saying ‘is this safe? Will you protect us and our families,’” Kliczewski said. Commenters also wanted to know why DOE proposed the change, and under what legal authority. Some asked how any change might affect existing legal mandates like the Tri-Party Agreement that governs remediation at Hanford.
The agency fielded many requests seeking information on how exactly the change would be implemented. Some stakeholders said they could not provide appropriate comments without knowing more specifics.
“We are reviewing all the public comments and we are considering each and every one of them,” Kliczewski said. “We cannot tell you at this time what we are going to do next.”
The Energy Communities Alliance strongly supports DOE moving forward with its high-level waste interpretation, but the agency must provide more data, said Kara Colton, director of nuclear energy programs for the Washington, D.C.-based group that represents localities surrounding DOE nuclear energy sites.
In a September 2017 report, ECA said local communities adjacent to DOE locations are becoming “defacto interim storage sites.” The report said over-classification of some waste as high-level runs up excessively high storage costs. A more accurate description of what waste is truly high-level could save billions of dollars over time by making it easier for some waste to be moved to existing disposal facilities, ECA has said.
The Energy Communities Alliance believes much of what is now called HLW shares radiological characteristics with either transuranic waste or Greater-Than-Class C waste. The Energy Department sends its transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. It is also legally responsible for disposal of GTCC waste, but does not yet have a place to put it.
The October notice from DOE was “a wonderful first step,” Colton said. The organization is looking to both the Energy Department and, ultimately, Congress, for measures to hasten the shipment of radioactive material from Cold War communities to facilities such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Waste Control Specialists’ disposal site in Texas, the Nevada National Security Site, Deep Isolation projects, and Yucca Mountain.
A key issue is who gets to decide what is safe and what isn’t, said Mark Clough, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality coordinator for the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement, a legal deal between the state, DOE, and the Navy about nuclear storage at the Idaho National Laboratory. The Energy Department needs to show how its reinterpretation might affect such existing agreements, he said.
