The New Mexico Environment Department has wrapped up the public comment period on an application by the Energy Department to amend the state hazardous waste facility permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
The state received about 100 pages of comments by Sept. 20, from dozens of individuals and groups, both praising and criticizing a proposal to allow DOE and WIPP management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership to revise the manner in which waste volume is counted at the underground repository for defense transuranic waste.
“Exactly how waste volume should be reckoned has been subject to debate and interpretation” over time, said New Mexico Rep. Cathrynn Brown, a Republican representing District 55, which includes Carlsbad and the disposal facility. “It’s a good government measure and makes economic sense to redeem space at WIPP,” she said.
“Safe operations of the WIPP site and along the transportation route should be the focus, not expansion” of waste being placed underground, said Scott Kovac, operations and research director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
The Energy Department has asked that the gaps between drums in a standard waste container no longer be counted as waste volume at WIPP, an approach it says is more in keeping with the intent of the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act.
The Energy Department and Nuclear Waste Partnership filed for the permit modification in January, saying it would apply to both to future waste emplacement and material already at the site. But while DOE filed it as a Class 2 modification, New Mexico Environment Secretary Butch Tongate ruled in June the state would treat the proposal a Class 3 modification, which provides for a public hearing.
The hearing is currently planned for next month in Carlsbad; any ruling would come months afterward.
Not counting the empty space between drums inside a waste container, as DOE prefers, would mathematically reduce the amount of waste now stored at WIPP by about 30 percent for purposes of the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act.
Under the current accounting method, the Energy Department has already empaneled roughly 90,000 cubic meters, more than half its 176,000-cubic-meter limit, which some forecasts have said could be reached before 2030. The requested modification would reduce that total to about 60,000 cubic meters.
“It would be tragic for waste at Los Alamos [which meets WIPP criteria]” to be left there “because of WIPP being considered ‘full’ because of our counting air as waste and losing one-third of our waste volume capacity,” John Heaton, a member of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force and a longtime advocate for nuclear operations in the region, said in his written comments.
Four organizations that oppose the change have asked for a public hearing and to engage in negotiations on disputed issues within the permit modification.
However, the groups – the Southwest Research and Information Center, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, say the Oct. 23 date proposed by NMED is too soon. That is because talks on certain draft permit issues, designed to occur prior to the hearing, would start Monday. Those four groups, and potentially others, could join the state, DOE, and NWP in the negotiations.
“This proposed schedule will have the effect of excluding some parties from the negotiations because of the short notice,” the four groups said in a Sept. 19 letter to NMED.
