Stakeholders urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move cautiously as it studies potentially establishing a specific definition and category for what is now informally called very low-level radioactive waste (VLLW).
In February, the agency issued a Federal Register notice seeking input on opportunities to enhance its regulatory framework for VLLW, given the significant amounts anticipated to require disposal as more nuclear power plants shut down. The NRC posed nine specific questions, including whether it should establish a specific regulatory definition for the material; whether there should be a new specific low-level waste category for VLLW; and whether categorization could produce “unintended consequences.”
Very low-level waste today refers generally to material with naturally occurring radionuclides or some other form of “residual radioactivity.” The material is not required to be taken to the four designated U.S. disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste, but instead is deemed safe enough for hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills.
US Ecology, which operates one of those four radioactive waste disposal facilities, said existing regulations make a new classification or designation for VLLW unnecessary. “US Ecology does not think it is necessary for NRC to create a new ‘VLLW’ category … as an addition to the existing LLW regulatory structure,” Joe Weismann, the company’s vice president for government and radiological affairs, wrote in a May 14 response to the commission.
Nuclear power provider Exelon Generation appeared less opposed to a new definition for VLLW, but said “care should be taken not to interrupt current disposal practices for this low-concentration radioactive waste stream.”
Any new formal regulatory definition for “should be crafted within the current low-level waste classification system of Class A, Class B, Class and Greater Than Class C,” wrote Leigh Ing, executive director of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission. “Otherwise, new programs to accommodate a waste stream outside of the framework provided on 10 CFR 61.5 would be required.”
