Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on Tuesday authorized shipment by road of various forms of waste from the shuttered American Centrifuge project in Ohio to the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site.
The approval was signed on the same day that the NRC posted a Federal Register notice of its finding of no significant impact from the transports, and declared that a full environmental impact statement is not necessary for regulatory approval.
With the NRC environmental assessment complete, the five-member commission itself does not need to approve the shipment plan.
Centrus Energy Corp. is decommissioning its lead cascade facility for advanced uranium enrichment technology at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site. The Obama administration cut funding for the American Centrifuge demo project in 2015; Centrus kept the plant alive with its own money into early 2016, then announced its closure.
Three types of waste are to be shipped to Nevada, according to the Federal Register notice: solid radioactive, liquid radioactive, and low-level mixed waste. Centrus expects to make roughly 315 shipments in total, wrapping up next year.
About 180,000 cubic feet of solid waste would be shipped to Nevada within box containers and intermodal freight transport containers.
The liquid waste is oils extracted from the lead cascade facility process equipment as it is being dismantled.
The solid low-level mixed waste consists of electronic parts from the lead cascade facility. The material would initially be shipped to an EnergySolutions facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., “to substantially reduce surface exposure to leaching media,” the NRC said in the Federal Register notice. It will then be sent to Nevada.
Separately, unclassified low-level contaminated liquid waste would be processed at a DOE facility in Piketon, Ohio, but would not go to Nevada.
