The House of Representatives on Thursday approved an amendment to the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Department of Energy from applying any “reclassification” of high-level radioactive waste to material held in Washington state.
The measure from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) was approved by voice vote as part of a package of amendments to the $733 billon defense policy bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The House then passed the final bill Friday on a largely party-line vote of 220-197, with all voting Republicans opposing and all but eight Democrats in support of the legislation.
The defense authorization sets spending limits for approved federal military programs, including nuclear cleanup at the Energy Department. The funding itself is provided by separate appropriations legislation.
The House NDAA authorizes roughly $5.5 billion in defense environmental cleanup funding for the Department of Energy. The Senate’s NDAA would authorize a little less than $5.5 billion for those remediation efforts overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM).
Defense environmental spending is the largest tranche of the overall EM cleanup budget. The White House wants $6.5 billion in Office of Environmental Management spending for fiscal 2020, while the House of Representatives has called for almost $7.2 billion, which would roughly equal fiscal 2019. The Senate has yet to produce any appropriations bills, with the start of the fiscal year less than three months away.
After taking public comment last fall, the Energy Department said in June that some radioactive waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel need not be considered high-level waste. The highly debated move partly opens the door for new disposal options for some HLW, which otherwise legally must be interred in a deep geologic repository. The agency said it has not made any decisions on waste management after tweaking its interpretation of the definition of high-level waste.
The Smith amendment says DOE is not authorized to spend money on its HLW reinterpretation for waste within the state of Washington.
For its part, the Energy Department asserts it is not reclassifying any waste but rather revising its interpretation of HLW under existing legislation. Some critics call that a distinction without a difference, and Smith’s amendment specifically uses the term.
The existing definition says HLW is highly radioactive material resulting from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which requires permanent isolation. The agency now says some material on the less radioactive end of the traditional high-level spectrum could conceivably be disposed of at sites licensed for low-level radioactive or transuranic wastes.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future said in 2012 there is probably 90 million gallons of such waste left over from decades of U.S. nuclear weapons production.
Smith’s amendment initially gave veto power to all governors on a case-by-case basis for the reinterpretation, but was revised this week to effectively block the HLW revision only in his state: home to the Hanford Site, and industrial-scale plutonium-production complex that is now a massive cleanup site. Fifty-six million gallons of radioactive waste is held in storage tanks at Hanford, though 90% of that is believed to be low-activity waste not covered by the DOE decision.
“The original amendment prohibited the interpretation from being applied unless the governor of the state approved,” a congressional source said Friday by email. But lawmakers elected to narrow the scope after concerns emerged about the potential precedent that would be set by legislating a governor veto.
“Our office is actively engaged on this and very appreciative of Congressman Smith’s leadership in opposing this dangerous rule and holding DOE accountable for the Hanford cleanup,” Emily Halvorson, a spokeswoman for Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D), said by email Wednesday. The governor, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president, and the Washington state Department of Ecology worked with Smith on the amendment.
The Energy Department says there are no plans to change treatment of high-level waste at Hanford, and it will continue to abide by terms of the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement that governs environmental remediation at the site.
The $750 billion Senate version of the defense policy bill does not appear to address the DOE high-level waste situation. The two chambers’ versions of the NDAA will now have to be reconciled.
Taking Foreign Contaminants to WIPP Fails to Make Policy Bill
A proposal to use the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to dispose of certain foreign radioactive isotopes did not make it into the final House NDAA.
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday did not include an amendment by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) and other lawmakers to specifically allow Russian-origin sealed sources of americium-241, collected by the National Nuclear Security Administration, to go to WIPP.
This material “may not” currently be eligible for disposal at WIPP, although it has the same isotope properties and is often co-located with transuranic sources eligible for emplacement at the underground salt mine, Fortenberry said in his amendment.
Americium is produced when plutonium absorbs neutrons in nuclear reactors or during nuclear weapons tests, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Some smoke detectors contain a bit of the material.
It is also used for oil drilling, Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) said in a June 25 House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing on DOE research. Olson proposed an amendment on disposal, but it also did not make the final cut for the NDAA.
“I’d like to change the law to dispose of this carcinogen without regard to where it came from,” Olson told Energy Secretary Rick Perry during the June hearing.
“I agree with you these types of materials do need to be placed in proper disposal places,” Perry replied. He added, however, that Congress would need to authorize disposal of foreign-sourced americium-241 at WIPP.
The NNSA collects americium-241 as part of its nuclear nonproliferation mission, the Fortenberry measure said, without further detail.
Dan Leone contributed to this article.
