The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to hold a meeting Wednesday about a long-awaited proposed rulemaking that will cover both low-level waste and Greater Than Class C waste.
The NRC last week published a few of the slides it planned to brief at Wednesday’s scheduled meeting, on the slate for 1:00 p.m. Eastern time and officially called to “discuss potential changes” to the NRC regulations governing those two common waste streams.
The commission in 2022 accepted NRC staff’s recommendation to combine rulemakings about Greater Than Class C (GTCC) waste and low-level waste. Staff made the recommendation in 2020, though not all staffers agreed the rules should be combined.
GTCC waste is supposed to go to a permanent geological repository, such as Yucca Mountain. Since none exists, some states, including Texas, want the ability to consent to near-surface disposal of this kind of waste, which includes things such as activated metals from power plants and manufacturing waste from radioisotope products.
The GTCC rulemaking started in 2015. The Department of Energy has suggested that the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a deep-underground site, might be a suitable home for GTCC waste, as might the commercially operated Waste Control Specialists disposal site in Andrews County, Texas.
Meanwhile, under the low-level waste portion of the combined rulemaking, NRC could amend its regulations to address disposal of depleted uranium from commercial uranium enrichment operations.
That type of waste wasn’t included in regulations drafted more than 40 years ago, in 1982. The low-level waste portion of the rulemaking could also remove transuranic waste from the list of nuclear waste that cannot be regulated under NRC’s Title 10, Part 61 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
