The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has scheduled a webinar for next week to offer details on its plan to ship some material currently classified as high-level radioactive waste from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to a facility in West Texas licensed for low-level waste.
The online session is set for 11 a.m. on Sept. 10.
The Energy Department said on Aug. 4 that within 12 months it would ship up to 8 gallons of recycled wastewater to Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, where it will be mixed with a concrete-like grout and disposed of on-site. This mixture will be classified as Class B low-level waste.
This pilot effort is the first step toward eventually transporting up to 10,000 gallons of such wastewater from the Defense Waste Processing Facility at SRS to Waste Control Specialists. Shipment and disposal of the full amount should be conducted in the 2030s, when the system for managing it on-site at Savannah River will have been retired, according to DOE.
The project to send recycled wastewater to Texas is the first major test of the Energy Department’s reinterpretation of the term “high-level waste,” which it says should be based on radiological risk rather than the origin of the material.
High-level waste is generated by the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Top officials at DOE say that law and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 grant them leeway to decide what is highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Low-level waste is a characterization applied to material that become contaminated with radioactive material or exposure to neutron radiation, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The agency has said some material classified as high-leel waste, such as this wastewater, poses no more risk than low-level waste already stored at the Texas site. The agency is therefore treating and disposing of what it says is low-risk material as low-level radioactive waste.
Otherwise, high-level radioactive waste by law must be buried in a federal geologic repository, such as the stalled Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, while low-level waste can be sent to commercial facilities. The Energy Department recently issued a finding of no significant impact for this project.
The pilot effort will involve 8 gallons from Tank 22 at the Savannah River Site H Tank Farm. The Energy Department has concluded it meets the new interpretation for classification as non-HLW.
A link to the webinar can be found here.
