Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff disagree over whether states may consent to accept Greater Than Class C waste for disposal in near-surface repositories, with some staff disputing the official commission line that such a thing is permissible, given a nuanced interpretation of law.
The commission brought the rift into the sunlight in early November, when it released both a policy issue supporting state consent and near-surface disposal of Greater Than Class C (GTCC) — a kind that is supposed to go to a permanent repository such as the moribund Yucca Mountain — and a dissenting staff opinion that says such a move is unlawful and did not consider public comments. Both documents were dated Oct. 21 and, until recently, marked for official use only.
The Department of Energy has said its own Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or Waste Control Specialists’ facility in west Texas, might be suitable GTCC disposal sites.
In the policy issue, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff reasserted their conclusion that states can accept the GTCC if they want to, and that most of the U.S. inventory of such material — projected at 420,000 cubic feet or 12,000 cubic meters — would be safe enough at a facility like Waste Control Specialists’.
But the policy issue stakes its claim on a broad interpretation of laws the govern GTCC disposal — one of which directly prohibits any but federal jurisdiction over GTCC, under a narrower, or plain-language, reading, the dissenting opinion said.
“Both interpretations are legally valid,” wrote the staff who authored the policy issue. According to the broad interpretation, under the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985 and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, states that are eligible to regulate radioactive waste disposal under an agreement with the NRC, and which are not accepting GTCC waste that must be regulated only by the NRC, should be eligible to host GTCC and GTCC-like waste.
The dissenting staff report disagreed, pointing to a provision of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act that says the federal government shall be responsible for disposal of all GTCC waste.
“The NRC staff’s ‘broad interpretation’ with its ‘construing’ of laws would create a dual regulation framework,” the dissenting report said.
GTCC waste includes activated metals from nuclear power reactors, sealed sources, waste from manufacturing of radioisotope products, and material from DOE’s West Valley Demonstration Project cleanup in New York state. Future streams could involve waste from production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99. NRC would have to regulate the latter stream, because of criticality concerns, the policy issue said, and some types of GTCC waste would carry security requirements that must be enforced by the federal government.
A GTCC rulemaking has been in the works for years. The NRC started work in December 2015, after Texas inquired about licensing a facility in the state for disposal of GTCC, GTCC-like, and transuranic waste. Asked this week when the NRC may come to a decision on the matter, spokesman David McIntyre told RadWaste Monitor the commission “works at its own pace.”
‘Until they reach a decision on the notation paper, the staff will not take further action,” McIntyre wrote in an email Thursday.
