Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/19/2015
EnergySolutions plans to submit by October responses to Utah’s questions concerning their depleted uranium performance assessment, EnergySolutions’ Senior Vice President of Commercial Business Development Bret Rogers said this week at the EPRI Low-Level Radioactive Waste Conference in Orlando.
Following the release of the state’s analysis of the PA, EnergySolutions requested the suspension of the review process after eight problem areas emerged in the state’s Safety Evaluation Report, released in April. The Department of Environmental Quality found that the PA meets requirements for protection of the public and inadvertent intruders, but the SER found EnergySolution’s PA deficient in eight areas, including areas related to the evapotranspiration cover, infiltration, erosion of cover, frost damage, effects of biological on radionuclide transport, clay liner, GoldSim quality assurance, and deep time analysis. The release of the report would have kicked off a seven week public comment period that would have included public hearings in Salt Lake City and Tooele, Utah, but those meetings turned into informational public meetings due to the public comment suspension.
EnergySolutions submitted Clive’s performance assessment for DU back in 2011 following the Utah Radiation Control Board’s 2010 decision to require a quantitative compliance period for DU out to 10,000 years, with a second qualitative review out to peak dose (approximately 2.5 million years). Subsequently, the state required additional information and a revised design for a DU disposal cell, which EnergySolutions resubmitted last year. Once EnergySolutions submits its responses, DEQ will start the seven week public comment period.
