Prior to exiting his job, New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary Butch Tongate authorized the U.S. Energy Department to change the way it counts material volume at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad so vacant spaces between container drums are no longer recorded as waste.
The longtime NMED manager was appointed to lead the state agency in September 2016 by then-Gov. Susana Martinez (R). However, he was no longer listed as secretary on the NMED website as of Friday, following the Tuesday inauguration of new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D).
Both the cabinet secretary and deputy secretary jobs are listed as vacant. All inquiries until the appointment of a new cabinet secretary are being directed to Jennifer Hower, NMED general counsel, who did not immediately return a phone call at deadline.
Advocacy groups such as Nuclear Watch New Mexico have said Tongate, as part of the outgoing Martinez administration, hurried to get the decision out the door before Tuesday. Foes have also argued the new counting method is a radical departure from established practice.
Scott Kovac, operations and research director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in a Monday email he could not comment at this time on possible avenues of appeal.
Tongate agreed with the position favored by DOE and its prime contractor for WIPP, Nuclear Waste Partnership, in a Dec. 21 decision that adopts the recommendations of state Hearing Officer Max Shepherd. The hearing officer recommended on Dec. 10 the waste volume measured against the disposal cap set by the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act should cover only the actual transuranic waste inside containers, rather than counting empty spaces or packing material.
Including empty spaces or filler material against the law’s maximum of 176,000 cubic meters of defense-related transuranic waste could lead to “premature” retirement of the underground disposal facility, DOE had argued. The facility is expected to continue taking waste for decades, Todd Shrader, manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, has said. The change to WIPP’s state hazardous waste facility permit will cut the waste volume figure by about 30 percent from its current level of 94,000 cubic meters, according to the hearing officer’s report.
In the two-page document adopting the report, Tongate did not elaborate on his reasons for concurring with the hearing officer but stressed the public comments, stakeholder negotiations, and an October public hearing that were considered in development of the Shepherd report.
The revised permit, which will implement Tongate’s order, is scheduled to take effect Jan. 20.
The hearing officer, in his report, said he found no evidence suggesting the Land Withdrawal Act intended WIPP to measure volume based on the size of the disposal container. Waste will continue to be measured by the volume of the “outermost container” for reporting under the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act (RCRA).
Development of any future panels for waste disposal in the underground salt mine, beyond the 10 already planned, would still need approval from the state, the hearing officer said.
The Energy Department and its contractor first applied for the revision on Jan. 31, 2018. Originally filed as a Class 2 permit revision, Tongate subsequently ruled it should be treated as a Class 3 revision with greater public review standards, including a public hearing.
The Energy Department also announced Dec. 26 that WIPP had received its first shipment of TRU waste from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois since before the underground disposal facility went offline for about three years following a February 2014 radiation leak.
The mixed TRU waste from Argonne consisted of items such as debris, tools, rags, residues, and clothing, DOE said in a news release. It also contained trace amounts of RCRA-regulated chemicals, such as cleaning solvents or lead.
The shipment from Argonne is the first remote-handled TRU to arrive at WIPP since January 2014, said NWP spokesman Donavan Mager. The December shipment arrived in a container with 1 inch of lead shielding, which “reduces the surface dose rate of the container to less than 200 millirem/per hour,” similar to contact-handled TRU waste, he added.
