PHOENIX, Ariz. — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the next couple months should issue a draft regulatory basis for a potential rulemaking on disposal of Greater-Than-Class C low-level radioactive waste, a senior official said Monday.
“That’s probably our No. 1 priority right now,” given stakeholder interest on the matter, according to John Tappert, director of the NRC’s Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs.
The draft would be opened for public comment, including workshops, with the aim of finalizing the document within six months of publication, Tappert told RadWaste Monitor on the sidelines of the 2019 Waste Management Symposia.
The intent of the regulatory basis is to determine whether there is justification to conduct a full update of federal regulations on disposal of GTCC waste by near-surface or other methods that do not involve deep geologic repositories. Current rules require the NRC to sign off on any option other than geologic disposal.
If NRC staff determines that some or all GTCC waste is suitable for near-surface disposal, the commission has directed the agency to proceed with rulemaking, Tappert said during a panel discussion at the conference. That process, based on the historical timeline for rulemakings, could take two to three years, he said.
Under a 1985 federal law on low-level waste, the Department of Energy is responsible for disposal of GTCC waste at a facility licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Greater-Than-Class C waste refers to any form of low-level waste with radionuclide concentrations greater than those for Class C material as classified by federal regulations. That covers sealed sources, scrap metal, and wastes from government and commercial nuclear operations such as cleanup of the West Valley Site in New York state and decommissioning of power plants.
The Energy Department is also responsible for the similar Greater-Than-Class C-like waste, low-level and non-defense transuranic wastes produced or owned by the agency. This material is stored at the Idaho National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Oak Ridge Reservation, among other locations.
The existing stockpile of roughly 6,000 cubic meters of these materials is ultimately expected to double. There is not yet an established disposal path given the ongoing absence of a federal repository.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission began studying the issue following a 2015 inquiry from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regarding state authority for licensing disposal of GTCC, GTCC-like, and transuranic wastes. The state agency was following up on a request for disposal authorization from Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, a private company that operates several facilities in West Texas for disposal of radioactive and other waste types.
The Energy Department in 2016 said its preferred disposal method for GTCC waste is generic commercial sites and/or its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. In October it issued a site-specific environmental assessment that suggested it would favor sending the material to Waste Control Specialists’ Federal Waste Facility.
Waste Control Specialists has been vocal about its interest in this business line, both before and after its January 2018 sale from holding company Valhi Inc. to private equity firm J.F Lehman & Co. Its property is one of four locations around the nation licensed for disposal of low-level radioactive waste. Competitor US Ecology has said it does not want to expand operations at its facility at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state to include GTCC and GTCC-like waste, while EnergySolutions has declined to discuss any plans for its sites in Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C.
“We are pleased with the progress that NRC has made and we look forward to the opportunity to review the draft regulatory basis,” Waste Control Specialists President and Chief Operating Officer David Carlson said by email Tuesday.
There are a number of steps that would have to be taken ahead of disposal of these wastes in Texas: a completed NRC rulemaking, approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and a DOE record of decision setting its preferred disposal pathway.
The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management this week did not respond to queries regarding the status of any record of decision.
The Texas agency is not currently conducting any approval proceeding, which would require updating state regulations on radioactive substances, a spokesperson said.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff were initially supposed to publish the GTCC draft regulatory basis six months after completing the separate update to the “Part 61” federal regulations on licensing requirements for land disposal of radioactive waste.
The commission later changed the publication schedule to six months after publication of the proposed supplemental rule for Part 61, then in October directed that the proceedings be decoupled to expedite the GTCC waste process.
The Part 61 revision process, dating to 2011, aims to update the regulations to address disposal of depleted uranium and other waste materials not covered in the original rule from the 1980s. Agency staff in 2016 submitted the proposed final rule to the commission, which in September 2017 requested five substantive revisions.
Those will be addressed in the supplemental proposed rule. They include the commission’s direction that the updated requirements be instituted on a “case by case basis,” more or less grandfathering, only on facilities that would dispose of significant levels of depleted uranium; and that the term of compliance be reduced from 10,000 years to 1,000 years.
As of mid-2018, staff had hoped to submit the proposed supplemental rule to the commission by early this year. That is now anticipated this summer, Tappert said during his presentation.
“The fly in the ointment has been that backfit provision, or grandfathering provision about reinstating the case by case analysis,” he said. “Because there’s a couple ways that could be done in a regulatory context, we want to make sure that what we’re doing is consistent with the commission’s intent. So there’s been some dialogue with senior agency leadership to make sure we’re all fully aligned before we publish that supplemental proposed rule.”
Once presented to the five commissioners, the proposed rule would also be opened for a 90-day public comment period. Afterward, it would be updated to incorporate comments and presented for final approval.
Personnel Changes
Tappert noted that Marc Dapas retired as director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) at the end of January.
Dapas had held the position since July 2016, his last role in a nearly 30-year career with the NRC. The office conducts regulatory operations to ensure the safe and secure, production, storage, transportation, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials.
Dapas’ former deputy, Scott Moore, is the interim NMSS director. Tappert is the acting deputy director.
