The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it will not penalize private contractor Waste Control Specialists for moving potentially explosive barrels of federally owned nuclear waste without the proper authorization in 2014.
In June 2014, in apparent violation of an NRC order, Waste Control Specialists moved 73 containers of transuranic nitrate-salt waste generated by weapons programs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory into the company’s Federal Waste Facility in Andrews, Texas, from a nearby outdoor storage pad.
Had it not moved the waste, the company has said ever since, rising temperatures in the Texas desert would have caused an explosive reaction in some of the containers — the same thing that happened earlier that year to similarly packaged Los Alamos nitrate salt waste at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
Now, “NRC agrees that WCS took actions that were appropriate to protect public health and safety,” Andrea Kock, deputy director of the NRC’s Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs, wrote in a Jan. 18 letter to to Waste Control Specialists CEO Rod Baltzer.
Accordingly, NRC decided “to refrain from issuing an enforcement action,” Kock wrote.
Waste Control Specialists did not reply to a request for comment this week.
Since April 2014, WCS has stored more than 100 barrels of the same kind of improperly packaged nitrate salts that blew open underground at WIPP. The company holds the containers under a contract with WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership that expires in March. The nitrate salts, which can react explosively with organic matter, were mistakenly packaged with organic kitty litter by a DOE subcontractor at Los Alamos.
WIPP closed right after the 2014 radiation leak and reopened Dec. 23 following a nearly three-year recovery operation.
