The Department of Energy plans to extend its deal with Waste Control Specialists through late 2026 for ongoing storage of stranded transuranic waste, stuck at the West Texas site for about a decade.
In June 2023, DOE told the Texas attorney general’s office it plans to move its 74 containers of transuranic waste out of the Waste Control Specialists site by the end of 2026, the agency said in an online notice Thursday.
“In the meantime, this procurement is necessary because it provides DOE the necessary waste storage services needed” until the transuranic waste can finally be moved out of Texas, the agency wrote in the notice.
The extension will be issued through an existing basic ordering agreement and run from Sept. 13, 2024 to Dec. 2, 2026 with no associated option periods, DOE said. The agency will issue a request for proposals, limited to Waste Control Specialists, within 60 days, the agency said in material published with Thursday’s notice.
The containers are what remains from a larger shipment of transuranic waste rerouted to Waste Control Specialists in 2014 following after similar waste drums ignited and burst open causing an underground radiation leak at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. WIPP is roughly 75 miles from Waste Control Specialists.
It was soon learned some drums redirected to the facility in Texas shared potential ignition traits with the drum that overheated and ruptured in the WIPP underground and prompted DOE to close the disposal site for about three years.
Since prior to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Texas has told DOE the remaining containers have overstayed their welcome and the state attorney general’s office got involved with the arm-twisting.
Waste Control Specialists President David Carlson told the National Cleanup Workshop in September 2023 that work is underway to prepare the remaining TRU containers from shipment away from his company’s Federal Waste Facility in West Texas. A couple of months prior to that, DOE announced it would pay Waste Control Specialists up to $16.5-million to repackage the waste boxes and prepare them for shipment at an above-ground storage area at the company’s property.
In May, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission signed off on the idea of moving the problematic waste to a new special enclosure at Waste Control Specialists where the containers would be prepared for shipment to another location, expected to be either WIPP or Los Alamos. DOE has said nearly all of the remaining waste boxes would be overpacked with glass beads before any shipment.
