New U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette assured a Senate committee recently that steps are being taken to tighten his department’s shipment of radioactive waste for disposal at the Nevada National Security Site.
Brouillette, at the time deputy energy secretary, listed several measures in a written response to a question submitted by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) following his Nov. 14 nomination hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The panel and full Senate subsequently voted in favor of his confirmation as the 15th secretary of energy.
Brouillette on July 9 ordered DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments to review agency-wide waste handling practices. The directive came after it was learned mislabeled waste had for six years been sent to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
During last month’s confirmation hearing, Brouillette told Cortez Masto the agency hopes within 40 days to issue a draft report on waste packaging and shipping operations.
The Energy Department has also developed new lines of inquiry to “more deeply interrogate” waste profiles and provide on-site verification of what material is arriving at Nevada, Brouillette wrote in his follow-up to Cortez Masto. The response was one of a long list of answers to questions for the record from committee members after the hearing.
A causal analysis is also being done to enhance waste vetting and disposal at NNSS, Brouillette wrote. Finally, DOE plans to be transparent with the state of Nevada in all aspects of the Y-12 investigation, he stated.
Both the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina have acceptable procedures in place for packaging and shipping radioactive waste, according to DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments.
The office offered its perspective this week in separate interim reports on each facility’s radioactive waste management.
The two interim reports credit both sites with conducting “rigorous and effective” self-assessments in response to the Brouillette order. The Office of Enterprise Assessments found no deficiencies at either location.
The Livermore report focused on efforts to characterize, package, and transport transuranic waste to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. Livermore has not sent shipments to WIPP since 2005, although it could start soon. Its TRU waste procedures have also been reviewed by the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, which oversees operations at WIPP.
At the Savannah River Site, the report included various types of waste managed by site operator Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation.
Ultimately, these two interim reports, and others from other DOE sites will be rolled into a final compilation on complex-wide waste practices.
