Stakeholders urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move cautiously as it studies potentially establishing a new designation and disposal approach for what is now informally called very low-level radioactive waste (VLLW).
More than 40 separate comments were submitted ahead of the May 15 deadline after the agency in February initiated a broad program to enhance its regulatory framework for VLLW. A number of private citizens warned against any move that could weaken regulatory oversight of radioactive waste, while other commenters parsed the potential drawbacks and benefits of a regulatory update.
“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.
An augmented regulatory framework could be necessitated by the significant amounts of very low-level waste anticipated to require disposal as more nuclear power plants shut down, alongside material from reprocessing plants or even a radiological incident, according to a Feb. 14 NRC Federal Register notice.
No recommendations have been made yet on potential options for an improved regulatory approach, NRC staff said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor. “Once the NRC staff evaluates the all stakeholder comments, the staff will develop a report discussing the results. Staff will prepare a SECY paper to inform and propose a path forward to the Commission in late 2018.”
The scoping study laid out in the Federal Register was first called for in a 2016 NRC staff programmatic assessment of the regulator’s low-level radioactive waste program. It would involve working with separate agencies to ensure consistent regulation of VLLW, also called low-activity waste (LAW); establishing guidance on disposal options for the material; and establishing a rule on low-activity waste disposal. The NRC will also study regulatory means for disposal of VLLW in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle C hazardous waste facilities.
In the notice, the NRC posed nine specific questions to interested parties, including whether it should establish a specific regulatory definition for very low-level radioactive waste; 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.” That would presumably be less radioactive than Class A low-level radioactive waste, which is the least hazardous of the three classifications for LLRW.
Very low-level waste can be disposed of at the four designated U.S. disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste, but also in hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills under federal rules for alternative disposal.
US Ecology, which operates one of those four radioactive waste disposal facilities, said existing regulations make a new classification or designation for VLLW unnecessary. Instead, the company favors employing “widely accepted performance-based criteria” for any site that could be used for disposal of VLLW, Weismann wrote. However, US Ecology would support new NRC guidance on VLLW disposal for a number of reasons, including providing a “fresh perspective” that would help industry address challenges in dealing with the waste type.
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.”
Exelon said classifying VLLW with a set radioactive concentration limit akin to that established by Section 10 Part 61 of the Code of Federal Regulations “may not be practical due to the currently varied concentration limits at different facilities.”
Part 61, which covers land disposal of radioactive waste, classifies radioactive waste as Class A, Class B, Class C, and Greater-Than-Class C, in increasing order of concentration of long-lived radionuclides.
Any new formal regulatory definition for “should be crafted within the current low-level waste classification system of Class A, Class B, Class C, 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.”
The Washington state Department of Health concurred. “To maintain consistency with the already established Part 61 waste classification system, VLLW could be limited to 10% of the Class A limit,” wrote Kristen Schwab, supervisor for the Waste Management Section of the state agency’s Office of Radiation Protection.
Any directly licensed VLLW disposal site should be limited to accepting waste that would not exceed the NRC aim of keeping the radioactive dose to a “few millirem per year,” according to Schwab. There should also be new guidance on the system for licensing such facilities, or at least an expanded licensing guidance that covers VLLW disposal sites, she added.
