Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/21/2014
Changes should be made to the current regulatory system in place for disused sources to incentivize licensees to reuse, recycle, or disposal the disused sources promptly, a Low-Level Radioactive Waste Forum working group recommended in a report presented this week at the LLW Forum in Austin, Texas. Working under a grant from National Nuclear Security Administration’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the group was charged with developing recommendations for improving the management of disused sealed sources that pose a threat to national security. “The regulatory system should be restructured to provide economic incentives for the prompt reuse, recycle, or disposal of disused sources,” the report says. “Financial assurance requirements should be broadened to cover all Category 1 through 3 sources and increased to cover the full cost of transportation and disposal. Licensees should be required to pay an annual possession fee for each sealed source in inventory.”
Economic incentives would help to address the material faster, according to the report. A major problem with disused sources is the cost associated with moving them. “As currently configured, the economics of sealed source ownership do not motivate owners toward prompt end-of-life disposition, resulting in thousands of sealed sources being stored indefinitely,” the report says. From the opposite side of incentivizing licensees, the report also warned against dis-incentivizing the proper disposal of disused sources. “However, the long-term solution to the disused source problem is to hold the licensees who have purchased and obtained the economic benefit from the sources responsible for the proper reuse, recycling, or disposal of the sources when they become disused,” the report says. “To this end, the NNSA should ensure that its programs do not provide a disincentive for licensees to properly reuse, recycle, or dispose of disused sources in a timely manner.”
The working group also recommended that new regulations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should go into effect to help aid the economic side of the problem. This new regulations would limit the storage of disused sources for two years before movement must occur. “The NRC and the Agreement States should develop a comprehensive regulation to limit the storage of disused sources to two years and authorize regulators to require the disposition of sources in storage for more than two years unless there is a demonstrated future use,” the report says. “The inventories of disused sources at sealed source manufacturers, suppliers, and waste brokers should be reduced. The NRC should reconsider its decision to allow foreign sources that may not have a commercial disposal pathway to be imported. The financial needs of the Agreement States should also be addressed.”
Need for More Type-B Casks
A lack of transportation options for the disused sources also contributed to the problem, the working group said. Type-B casks are in short supply, which also makes them more expensive to use due to their low supply. The NNSA should help ease this demand through steps to encourage the production of more casks, the group said. “NNSA should undertake a market analysis of the demand for Type B shipping containers and take additional steps to encourage the private sector to increase the supply of commercially available Type B shipping containers,” the report says. “NNSA should identify several internationally-certified Type B shipping containers that would have widespread applicability to disused sources in the U.S. and submit applications to have these packages certified by NRC for domestic use. The NRC should continue to expeditiously review applications for Type B shipping containers. The NRC should aggressively notify licensees and the Agreement States well in advance of the expiration of shipping container certifications.”
