The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week initiated a rulemaking that would reduce a number of charges for disposal of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) at the Waste Control Specialists complex in Andrews County.
Without discussion during a meeting Wednesday, the three-member commission approved a hearing and publication of proposed amendments to the Texas Administrative Code.
The changes to the code would apply to fees for the WCS-managed, state-owned Texas Compact Waste Facility. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists has struggled to attract sufficient volumes of waste to turn a profit, and the state government has considered fee reductions as a means to drive up business.
Within the proposed updates are a number of changes to Section 336.1310 of the Texas Administrative Code, which covers the rate schedule for waste disposal under the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact.
The base disposal charge would be set at $100 per cubic foot of waste for Class A LLRW, eliminating the prior classification in which the cost for routine waste was $100 and shielded material $180. The biological waste charge, $350 per cubic foot, would be eliminated entirely.
Within radioactivity charges the curie inventory charge would drop from $0.55 per millicurie to $0.40, while the rulemaking would do away with charges for carbon-14 inventory and special nuclear material.
Among the surcharges, the weight surcharge category for 10,000 to 50,000 pounds per container would be eliminated, as would the dose rate surcharges from one to five roentgen per hour, greater than five to 50 roentgen per hour, and greater than 50 to 100 roentgen per hour. Finally, the $2,500 per-cask handling surcharge would be erased.
Under the Texas Administrative Code, members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact can be charged no more than the listed fees. Vermont and Texas are the only members of the compact. Other states that send low-level radioactive waste to the facility must be charged more than the listed disposal fees.
“This reduction in fees for out-of-compact generators may increase the amount of waste they receive from these generators,” the rulemaking document says, but commission staff cautioned they could not be sure whether Waste Control Specialists’ LLRW disposal market share would increase.
The WCS site is one of four active low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The others are EnergySolutions facilities in Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C., and US Ecology’s operation at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
From April 2012 to February 2018, the Texas Compact facility has received 22,596 cubic feet of LLRW from Vermont and Texas and 93,598 cubic feet from non-compact states, according to figures from the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission. Disposal rates fluctuate from quarter to quarter. For example: WCS received 4,643 cubic feet of material from non-compact states from March 1 to May 31, 2017, and less than half that in the next reporting period.
Waste Control Specialists lost millions of dollars over the years for prior owner Valhi Inc., which in January sold the company to private equity firm J.F. Lehman & Co. The increasing market for waste from nuclear power reactor decommissioning is seen as an opportunity for WCS to improve its performance, and the company is also working with Orano to revive plans frozen in 2017 for a consolidated interim spent nuclear reactor fuel facility on its property.
J.F. Lehman did not respond to a request for comment on the rulemaking’s potential impact on Waste Control Specialists’ business. A spokesman for the state commission also said it was premature to answer any questions about the rulemaking process.
Texas requires the compact waste facility to provide 5 percent of gross receipts from LLRW disposal to both the state General Revenue Fund and to Andrews County for public works programs. The potential fee reduction would cut 12 percent from revenue delivered to the state fund under current waste disposal levels, about $156,000 per year, according to the rulemaking proposal. A specific amount was not listed for the county fund.
The Texas Legislature last year froze the state surcharge for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, so any impact from the fee reduction would not be felt until the 2020 budget year. The county, though, would be impacted as soon as the rulemaking is adopted.
Updates are also proposed for the Texas Administrative Code language on maximum disposal rates and contracted disposal rates. For one: the licensee would be authorized to request an adjustment to maximum disposal rates to offset inflation.
Along with a number of other updates to the code, the rulemaking would eliminate the yearly mandate for rate adjustments for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
A number of wording changes are proposed, notably mandating that licensees “shall, to the extent practical, conduct operations to minimize the introduction of residual radioactivity into the site, including the subsurface.”
The rulemaking proposal is scheduled to be published June 8 in the Texas Register. Public comment on the matter would be taken from that day through July 10, with a hearing anticipated on June 28. Adoptions of the new rules is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 17.
