The Energy Department and the state of New York disagree on whether waste at the West Valley Demonstration Project should be considered defense-related, according to testimony Friday before the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee.
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) General Counsel Noah Shaw told the panel both high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and transuranic at waste (TRU) left at the one-time nuclear fuel reprocessing site should be considered defense-related under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
The state hopes the distinction will provide a quicker path to permanent disposal, as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is already authorized to take defense waste for permanent disposal. Otherwise, West Valley could be waiting on the long-promised permanent repository for commercial radioactive waste.
“Without a national solution, you will be an interim [storage] site forever,” subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said to Shaw. Shimkus noted he spearheaded legislation passed last week by the House to jump-start the Energy Department’s license application for the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.
The Energy and Commerce panel is considering legislation from Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) to reauthorize West Valley through 2026 and redefine its radioactive waste as specifically defense-related. The committee did not take any action during the Friday hearing.
But Mark Gilbertson, associate principal deputy assistant secretary of energy for regulatory and policy affairs for environmental management, made it clear DOE opposes the latter part of the Reed bill.
The 1980 West Valley Demonstration Act put the Energy Department in charge of cleanup of the western New York site that was once home to a Nuclear Fuel Services facility for spent fuel reprocessing. As it was not a government plant, West Valley is not considered part of the Cold War weapons program, although much of its waste is similar to transuranic waste sent to WIPP.
“Further, the Federal government’s historical position has been, and remains, that the HLW was generated as a result of commercial activities,” Gilbertson said in his written comments. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the predecessor to DOE, supported West Valley as a means to help develop a private nuclear industry, including reprocessing, the Energy Department official said.
Solidification of the site’s high-level waste was completed in 2002, and the resulting 278 canisters of material have been placed onto an on-site pad for interim storage. Cemented low-level waste has already been sent to the Nevada National Security Site for disposal, according to NYSERDA.
Sixty percent of the spent nuclear fuel reprocessed at West Valley resulted from defense activities at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and another 15 percent came from research facilities or other power reactors under contract to the federal government, NYSERDA has said.
But the dual nature of the material at West Valley was well known by both the state and the federal governments when the West Valley Demonstration Act was passed a couple years before the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Gilbertson said. The later legislation charged DOE with finding a permanent home for the nation’s spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
“The WVDPA explicitly left title to the West Valley vitrified waste with the State and deferred the question of its ultimate disposition to generic legislation then under consideration. The NWPA, passed just two years later, did not alter the WVDPA provision that disposition of the West Valley vitrified waste was the responsibility of New York State and not DOE,” Gilbertson said in his written testimony.
But Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), who once headed NYSERDA, said congressional acts are often revisited and re-evaluated. “West Valley is a unique site,” and the ambiguous disposal path for some of its waste has led to decades of disagreement between DOE and the state, he added.
The West Valley Demonstration Project covers about 200 acres of the 3,300-acre Western New York Nuclear Service Center in the town of Ashford.
“At its core, the Western New York Nuclear Service Center was an Atomic Energy Commission project, and because New York State was encouraged by the AEC to develop it, the federal government should provide a disposal path for all waste on the site,” Reed said in his testimony.
