Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/17/2014

A majority of the commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have voted to reduce the proposed standard for the time of compliance in its revision of the NRC’s 10 CFR Part 61 waste classification system, RW Monitor has learned. The new revision would reduce the initial time of compliance for a disposal site to 1,000 years, compared to the 10,000 years proposed by the NRC staff in the rule update. The reduction in the time of compliance follows a lengthy debate over the course of the Part 61 update. Those in favor of the reduction cited the lack of realistic, applicable data that could determine performance out to 10,000 years while those in favor of a longer time frame cited that a quality site would hold up through any time frame.

Once all five votes of the Commissioners are in, the NRC should soon be issuing the Staff Requirements Memorandum, a memo that would tell the staff which direction the rulemaking should take. The SRM is expected “any day now,” according to officials close to the process. The NRC declined to comment on the nature of the votes this week.

The proposed revision of the Part 61 system is the latest iteration of the NRC’s Site Specific Assessment (SSA) rulemaking, begun in 2009 to address disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium. The NRC staff’s previous draft rulemaking would require low-level radioactive waste disposal sites to perform a site-specific analysis to prove their site was protective of public health and safety for 10,000 years, down from a period of compliance of 20,000 years of previous drafts. The draft rulemaking also previously called for a two-tier analysis with the first period covering 10,000 years and the second period covering long-lived isotopes.

Should Depleted Uranium Be Its Own Rule?

Meanwhile, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards held another meeting this week with the NRC staff to discuss and summarize previous issues brought up during past meetings. The line of questioning during this meeting focused on the effects the depleted uranium requirements would have on other waste streams. “This is to me more than a limited rulemaking,” ACRS member Sam Armijo said. Other ACRS members questioned if depleted uranium should be its own rule. “Why wasn’t it a separate decision from the beginning? Why should this affect the class A, B, and C waste? Why are these two things combined?” ACRS member Harold Ray asked.

In response to these questions, the NRC staff maintained that depleted uranium and the Part 61 update was a larger issue concerning site-specific analysis. “Fundamentally, what we are trying to do with the rule is to establish everything to be dependent on a site specific analysis so that [the disposal sites] can take credit for their revised engineering so we aren’t talking about being hooked to a generic human site modeled back in the 1980’s,” said Chris McKenney from the Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection. “The sites can be dynamic in their running of their sites by being able to take credit for their engineering, being able to take credit for their waste streams and their management of the waste, rather than having to come out to NRC or the state regulator and say this new waste stream doesn’t fit into the scheme.”

Regulatory Burden

Some of the ACRS members questioned if this update would cause unnecessary burden for current sites that do not accept depleted uranium and future sites that do not want to accept depleted uranium. The NRC staff responded that all the current sites have accepted depleted uranium already so this problem does not exist. “I am not as convinced there is this additional regulatory burden,” said Larry Camper, director of Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection. “Already under 61.12 and 61.13 they are required to perform a technical review. The states that operate these sites already have a period of compliance—South Carolina 2,000 years, Washington 10,000 years, Utah is going to 10,000 years, Texas 1,000 or peak dose. I think that those sites that have large quantities of depleted uranium disposal will have additional regulatory burden to deal with, but that’s for those sites that are dealing with disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium. Aside from that, I don’t think there will be a huge increase in regulatory burden,” he said.