The Department of Energy expects to use one of five firms selected in December for a task order to move transuranic waste currently stored at the Separations Process Research Unit facility in Schenectady County. N.Y., an agency spokesperson said via email this week.
EnergySolutions, Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Unitech Services Group, Waste Control Specialists and Veolia Nuclear Solutions Federal Services won five-year DOE basic ordering agreements for nationwide low-level and mixed-low level waste handling. The DOE Office of Environmental Management intends to use one of them to transfer the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) transuranic waste, the spokesperson said.
The agency started planning removal of the New York-based waste in fiscal 2020 and the process has taken longer than initially planned, the spokesperson said. The DOE now anticipates moving the transuranic waste to the Idaho National Laboratory in fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 where it will undergo processing and certification before final transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The current timeline is in the Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request justification for nuclear cleanup.
The state-federal 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement on spent nuclear fuel, amended in 2019 with a supplement agreement, requires any nuclear waste entering the state be treated within six months of arrival and then be shipped out-of-state within six months of treatment, the DOE spokesperson said.
The one-year turnaround requirement dates back to the initial 1995 Settlement Agreement, said Brian English, hazardous waste permits supervisor with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said in a Wednesday email. No new state permit is required prior to such shipments, although DOE is supposed to seek state “concurrence,” he said.
While the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at Idaho National Laboratory no longer operates its “super compaction” equipment to reduce the size of waste, crews at the facility can still open and inspect contact-handled drums prior to WIPP shipment, English said. The Idaho Nuclear Technical and Engineering Center can do this for remote-handled waste, he added.
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in December conveyed ownership of the SPRU, located within the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, back to the Office of Naval Reactors in December after completion of site remediation in 2019. But 24 containers of transuranic waste remain onsite. DOE is also considering if some of the material qualifies as low-level radioactive waste, according to the 2022 budget request.
Most of the transuranic at SPRU is remote-handled, the DOE spokesperson said. Remote-handled transuranic waste is more radioactive — with a surface dose rate of more than 200 millirem per hour and is typically shipped to WIPP in shielded containers. Contact-handled transuranic waste, with a dose below the 200 millirem milestone, accounts for more than 90% of the material sent to the underground disposal site in New Mexico.
“Any decision to ship SPRU waste to Idaho for processing and certification would need to meet the Settlement Agreement requirements, consider schedules for remote-handed waste certification, shipment and emplacement at WIPP, and existing shipment priorities at Idaho,” the DOE spokesperson said.
