The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a means for simplifying the process by which very low-level radioactive waste (VLLW) can be shipped to certain landfills for disposal.
The agency on March 6 announced plans for an interpretive rule to issue “specific exemptions” that would enable landfills to receive VLLW without needing approval for each shipment. The rule is open for public comment through April 20, according to a Federal Register notice.
It would specifically cover land burial of very low-level waste in hazardous and solid waste facilities regulated under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, an NRC spokesman said Monday.
Very low-level radioactive waste is an informal term for the least radioactive form of Class A LLW, which is the least hazardous of the three official classifications for the waste type. The designation encompasses material with naturally occurring radionuclides or other residual radioactivity, which is generally considered safe for disposal in landfills not specifically designed for radioactive wastes.
For the most part, NRC regulations require that licensed materials such as VLLW be transferred to licensed entities. There are currently four commercial facilities licensed to accept low-level waste. All four are licensed through an NRC agreement state, which assume much of the authority for regulating radioactive materials: EnergySolutions sites in South Carolina and Utah, Waste Control Specialists’ operation in Texas, and US Ecology’s facility in the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
The only other means for disposal is to obtain a case-by-case exemption under the NRC’s regulations for alternative disposal for radioactive waste. The agency has approved a number of requests over the last two decades for such disposal of VLLW from decommissioning of nuclear power plants, encompassing hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of concrete, soil, and other materials.
Annually, the agency processes fewer than five alternative disposal requests per year, McIntyre said. However, that does not cover requests from licensees in an agreement state to send waste for disposal in another agreement state. There are currently 39 agreement states.
As more nuclear power plants transition from power production to decommissioning, the number of alternative disposal filings is expected to grow, NRC spokesman David McIntyre said this week.
By becoming an “authorized recipient” with a specific exemption for disposal under the proposed interpretive rule, landfill operators could avoid the existing case-by-case requirement. That would be carried out under existing provisions in NRC regulations for transfers of radioactive material to exempt persons. It would solely cover individuals with direct exemptions from licensing requirements set by the Atomic Energy Act and NRC regulations covering domestic licensing of byproduct material, source material, and special nuclear material. It would apply to recipients in agreement states and those in which the NRC remains the primary regulator of radioactive materials.
“The interpretive proposed rule was developed over the past several months as a means to make the disposal of VLLW more efficient, rather than requiring a detailed review for each VLLW disposal request under 10 CFR 20.2002,” McIntyre wrote in a Monday email.
The rule would not apply to other, more radioactive, forms of low-level waste. “Additionally, the NRC also plans to limit the specific exemptions it issues for disposal to land burial, because the intent of such disposal is to safely isolate waste from people and the environment,” the Federal Register notice says.
Federal exemptions would be limited to a cumulative annual dose under 25 millirem. Agreement states would not necessarily be limited to that figure, but could approve exemptions in line with their radioactive materials programs.
There are no existing exemptions of this type, McIntyre said.
Applications for exempt status from the NRC would involve a comprehensive safety analysis, encompassing descriptions of the planned form of land burial, source term, proposed disposal facility, and dose calculations.
“Applications should explain why the requested exemption is authorized by law, will not endanger life or property or the common defense and security, and is otherwise in the public interest,” the NRC said in the notice.
Executives from two of the licensed low-level waste disposal providers, US Ecology and Waste Control Specialists, weighed in on the interpretive rule at this week’s Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix.
“The NRC is saying, if you want to take very low-level waste at high volumes, you have to do a performance assessment, you have to have a radiation safety program, and probably most importantly you have to have stakeholder buy-in. You have to have both your regulators and your stakeholders buy in to this solution,” Joe Weismann, US Ecology vice president for government and radiological affairs, said during one panel discussion. “I think that it’s a good thing that the NRC has weighed in on this.”
He cautioned, though, against requiring landfills to receive specific exemptions for certain materials. For example, nonlicensed facilities in the United States already have decades of experience in accepting smoke detectors and other items with minute amounts of radiation under the federal rule for “unimportant quantities of source material,” he said.
Waste Control Specialists President and Chief Operating Officer David Carlson said material received at the low-activity waste facility at the company’s Andrews County, Texas, disposal complex must meet the standard for 1 millirem yearly dose for the most exposed person over a 1,000-year compliance period. He compared that against the 25 millirem cumulative annual dose cited in the NRC notice.
“What does that really mean about what we’re putting into municipal landfills, I have certainly some concerns about that,” he said.
Comments on the proposed rule can be submitted via regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2020-0065; or by mail, to Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff.
Comments will be considered in finalizing the rule interpretation, McIntyre said. “The current timeline for this activity is tentatively late summer, depending on the nature and scope of the comments received.”
