The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved leaving problem waste from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) at the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) disposal facility in Texas for up to two more years, and Texas regulators are expected to follow suit.
The head of NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Marc Dapas, officially granted the federal approval in a Wednesday letter to WCS Radiation Safety Officer Jay Cartwright. Dapas said the agency is satisfied the waste can continue to be safely stored at WCS through Dec. 23, 2020.
With the current extension to a 2014 order set to expire in days, the NRC published an environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact (FONSI) in Tuesday’s Federal Register for leaving the potentially combustible transuranic waste in place for the time being. The NRC said no environmental impact statement is needed after it determined continued storage should not increase radiological risk to the public and that worker exposure should remain within occupational limits.
The FONSI document was a necessary step before NRC could formally issue the extension, agency spokesman David McIntyre said by email. The NRC letter approved the request WCS made in August for an update to a 2014 order on continued possession of the special nuclear material.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state regulator for waste disposal at WCS, also plans to approve the extension, agency spokesman Brian McGovern said in a Thursday email. He did not say when that was expected to occur.
“We are confident that timely approval will occur,” WCS President and Chief Operating Officer David Carlson said by email.
The transuranic waste has been at WCS in Andrews County, Texas, since April 2014. That material had been bound for DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, but the facility closed two months earlier following a radiation release linked to waste from Los Alamos. It was instead redirected to Texas, where in June 2014 Waste Control Specialists got word from the Energy Department that some of its Los Alamos waste might be similar to the material that caused the WIPP episode.
The waste from Los Alamos has been held two different facilities at WCS, the Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facility, and the Federal Waste Facility.
A team headed by the Energy Department, with personnel from WCS, the NRC, the state of Texas, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is trying to come up with a longer-term plan for the waste. The order marking WCS the short-term home for the waste was previously extended in 2016, NRC noted.
Of the 582 Los Alamos drums or barrels received at WCS, more than half have been found safe and shipped to WIPP for disposal, McGovern has said. Of the drums that remain at WCS, 113 show traits consistent with the problem drums from Los Alamos.
In March 2017, DOE retained Idaho-based SUNSI JV to analyze options to enable the combustible waste to be shipped to WIPP. That report is believed to be complete and submitted to the Energy Department, but has not been released.
In its Wednesday letter, the NRC hinted resolution of the situation might be in sight. “As part of its participation on the Integrated Project Team, the NRC is aware that developments in 2019 could allow all of the remaining LANL Waste in storage at the WCS Site to be safely shipped” under Department of Transportation requirements to WIPP, Los Alamos, or elsewhere or time. The NRC letter did not elaborate on those developments.
