PHOENIX, Ariz. — Staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects this spring to issue their findings regarding potential updates to the regulatory approach for disposal of so-called very low-level radioactive waste.
The study initiated in 2016 considered a wide range of options, from maintaining the status quo to a full rulemaking to update federal regulations, NRC officials said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the 2019 Waste Management Symposia.
Along with rulemaking, staff also considered a significant guidance that would make the system more efficient or some smaller changes to the current process, according to Chris McKenney, chief of the NRC’s Risk and Technical Analysis Branch.
He declined to say what approach will be recommended to the five-person commission.
“That range of activities are evaluated in the information paper,” McKenney said. “And, unfortunately, I’ll have to leave you wanting for the answer at this point.”
Very low-level waste (VLLW) is an informal designation for the least radioactive form of Class A radioactive waste as classified in federal regulations for the NRC. Class A is already the least-radioactive material with a formal classification and represents roughly 90 percent of all low-level radioactive waste.
Very low-level waste is generated during decommissioning of nuclear facilities, primarily encompassing lightly contaminated soils, debris, and structural materials, according to Joe Weismann, vice president for government and radiological affairs for environmental services company US Ecology. Today, VLLW can be disposed of in one of the licensed disposal sites for low-level waste or in hazardous or municipal landfills under federal regulations for alternative disposal.
The scoping study was initiated with an eye toward making the disposal process more efficient as increased amounts of waste are expected from an increasing number of nuclear plant decommissioning projects in the United States. Twelve plants are already due to shut down between now and 2025.
The study had multiple parts, including: coordinating with separate government agencies for consistent regulation of the material and defining the conditions under which VLLW could be shipped to Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle C hazardous waste sites. In taking stakeholder input last year, the NRC posed nine questions, including whether it should establish a specific regulatory definition for very low-level radioactive waste; whether there should be a new specific low-level waste category for VLLW; and whether categorization could produce “unintended consequences.”
In comments submitted last year, Boise, Idaho-based US Ecology and other government and commercial stakeholders expressed caution about a new regulatory classification for VLLW. US Ecology was directly opposed, preferring instead a “widely accepted performance-based criteria” for any potential VLLW disposal facilities.
The question is not of disposal capacity, but of access, Weismann said during a conference panel earlier in the week. It currently takes US Ecology eight to 15 months to secure NRC approval for disposal of very low-level waste in a RCRA facility through the process under federal regulations for approval of alternative disposal, he said.
The NRC this spring also anticipates releasing an updated guidance on processing requests for alternative disposal under 10 CFR 20.2002.
US Ecology’s disposal facility at Grand View, Idaho, largely handles the company’s VLLW disposal. The site alone has a total capacity of nearly 28.5 million cubic yards, enough to handle material from scores of projects the size of the upcoming decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California, Weismann said.
“If we can improve how to speed that up by doing preapprovals, by doing qualifications, by doing … ‘licensing light,’ however you want to look at it, that would be a fantastic boon for the industry and give them much more options,” he said.
