The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday it found no significant environmental impact from allowing Waste Control Specialists to move containers of long-stranded Department of Energy transuranic waste to another location within the company’s Andrews County, Texas property.
The move, sought by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) 11 months ago, would allow relocation of 74 containers of potentially-ignitable transuranic waste, generated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, to an enclosure at the WCS Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility Bin Storage Area, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said in a Federal Register notice.
Moving the standard waste boxes from the current location at WCS Federal Waste Facility would be an early step toward preparing the containers for shipment away from WCS, NRC said.
The transuranic waste will stay in the enclosure until DOE ships the Los Alamos waste “off the WCS site to a future DOE determined location, which is currently expected to be either the DOE LANL [Los Alamos] or the DOE Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Facility,” according to the Federal Register notice.
The truck trip to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is roughly 75 miles, while Los Alamos is a 365-mile trip, according to the document.
The containers are among those originally rerouted to WCS due to a February 2014 underground radiation leak at WIPP. The transuranic waste has been stuck in West Texas after some containers were found to have traits similar to the Los Alamos drum that overheated and ruptured in the underground disposal site. Most of the transuranic drums, not found to have the ignition characteristics, were already shipped on to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Waste Control Specialists will dismantle the “shade structure” surrounding 35 modular concrete canisters containing 74 standard waste boxes buried in sand at the company’s Federal Waste Facility, according to NRC. A standard waste box has about 63 cubic feet of capacity and can hold up to to seven 55-gallon drums, according to DOE.
The larger modular canisters are more than nine-feet-high and used by WCS to dispose of various types of waste. A backhoe and dump truck will remove most of the sand covering the canisters. The rest will be cleared manually.
Canisters will be removed and, provided that radiation surveys and checks of water and temperature levels of the concrete canisters don’t turn up signs of trouble, the relocation will proceed, according to the NRC notice.
Equipment will pick up and place the canisters onto a remote-controlled transport trailer, which looks like a heavy-duty trailer seen on the highway or on trains. The concrete containers, which will get new lids, will be moved two-at-a-time on the transport trailer, NRC said.
The waste will be taken to an enclosed temperature-controlled containment structure equipped with a high efficiency particulate air ventilation system, according to the document. The DOE last year endorsed the idea of building some type of new radiological enclosure at Waste Control Specialists to be used to prepare the waste for removal. It is not entirely clear from the NRC document if that enclosure is the polyvinyl chloride Architectural Membrane Tent, cited in the Federal Register document. DOE did not comment.
NRC does not expect significant changes in radiation risk to workers as a result of the relocation. The agency foresees only minor transportation impacts because the work all occurs onsite at WCS and would involve on-site equipment.
In 2014, NRC approved temporary storage of the problematic Los Alamos waste at both Waste Control Specialists’ federal disposal cell and the Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility, according to the Federal Register notice.
The temporary storage authorization was modified in five NRC letters, the first in September 2016 and the most recent on June 8, 2022, according to the Thursday notice.
The state of Texas has been pushing the DOE Office of Environmental Management since 2019 to move the waste that has overstayed its welcome. The acting boss of Environmental Management, William (Ike) White, has repeatedly said moving the waste is a top priority but has not publicly committed to any timetable.
The Office of Waste Radioactive Materials Division at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality filed comments with NRC on the draft assessment last month, according to NRC. WCS and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality declined comment and DOE could not immediately be reached for comment.
