The U.S. Department of Energy has thrown its support behind limiting compliance to 1,000 years in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s update to its Part 61 rule on storage of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW).
“DOE is fully supportive of moving to a single 1,000-year time of compliance and sees no unintended consequences,” according to comments submitted Nov. 16 by Mark Senderling, deputy assistant energy secretary for waste and material management, to NRC Secretary of the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook. “In contrast, we believe there would be significant unintended consequences of retaining a 10,000-year compliance period: added effort and cost without meaningful benefits in terms of safety and protectiveness of disposal.”
Commission staff in September 2016 submitted draft final revisions to federal regulations on licensing land disposal of radioactive waste to address waste types such as depleted uranium that had not been considered when the Part 61 rule was formulated. At the time, the draft called for a 25-millirem dose limit for a compliance period of 1,000 years after disposal site closure, or 10,000 years for LLRW with long-lived radionuclides. Staff noted the long-lived nature of depleted uranium and the large amount of the material due to be disposed of in commercial facilities.
However, in a set of revisions to the draft submitted in September, the commission directed that staff reinstate a comprehensive 1,000-year compliance period with an annual maximum dose of 25 millirem.
The comment period for the draft regulatory analysis for the final rule ended on Thursday, Nov. 16. The NRC expects to issue its supplementary rule, based on the commission’s directives, next spring.
Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions, one of three companies licensed by the NRC for disposal of low-level radioactive waste, also backed the revisions set by the commission.
“EnergySolutions believes that the direction given by the Commission … will lead to a rule that is more technically sound and reasonable and that effectively protects health and safety of the public,” Daniel Shrum, the company’s senior vice president for regulatory affairs, wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to the NRC.
Shrum touted the commission’s decision on the compliance period, saying a 10,000-year period requires “analyses that are simply not technical credible.”
In separate comments, the state of Utah acknowledged cost savings inherent in limiting compliance to 1,000 years, but as more ambivalent than DOE and EnergySolutions about such a move.
“Otherwise, moving to a single compliance period of 1,000 years for determining compliance with the performance objectives, particularly for a site intending to dispose of [depleted uranium] with its extremely long-term radiological characteristics, creates a significant regulatory shortfall,” wrote Scott Anderson, director of the state’s Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control.
