Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/6/2014
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun seeking public comment on a draft regulatory issue summary that addresses the reporting of radionuclides on the uniform waste manifest, according to a notice in the Federal Register this week. The NRC wants to identify instances where licensees use “indirect methods” to determine the activity of tritium, carbon-14, technetium-99, and iodine-129 reported on the uniform manifest when they appear at a concentration less than the lower limit of detection, the notice said. “Research indicates that the use of the LLD values as the standard concentration reported on the uniform waste manifest may be resulting in a significant over-estimation of the inventory of these four radionuclides in disposal facilities,” the notice said. “Over-estimation of inventory could lead to premature loss of disposal system capacity (e.g., closure of disposal sites), whereas underestimation of inventory could lead to health and safety concerns.” Public comments are due by July 2.
Concerns that over-estimation of these inventories is leading to the waste of valuable space in disposal sites, as well as safety impacts, have motivated the NRC to issue this draft RIS, according to NRC spokesperson Maureen Brown. “This RIS originated with a request from the industry to address concerns that the activities of these radionuclides were not being accurately reported on the uniform manifest,” Brown said. “Rather, they are one end of the spectrum of what can result from less-than-accurate accounting. The other end of the spectrum is health and safety impacts (but we have no specific concern about that either). The purpose of presenting this spectrum of impacts is to provide a context for why accurate reporting of the activities of these radionuclides is important.”
