Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
9/19/2014
Limited storage capacity is a major hurdle for Oak Ridge’s transuranic waste program during the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s current shutdown, and though the site is taking steps to continue progress, it is at risk of missing regulatory milestones. With storage nearing its limit at the site’s TRU Waste Processing Facility, drums are being moved across site to the legacy transuranic waste storage facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Another issue is storage of remote-handled waste, as it is currently at capacity and processing of that waste has stopped for the time being. “We have put together a response plan that maximizes continued progress towards meeting our enforceable regulatory milestones and utilizes the existing resources at the TWPC including the facilities and trained personnel to minimize the lifecycle cost of processing and certifying waste,” Laura Wilkerson of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Operations Office said earlier this month at this year’s RadWaste Summit.
The suspension of operations at WIPP in February happened right at the end of a multi-year pause in shipments at Oak Ridge, during which waste drums piled up in a backlog. Due to funding constraints, in the spring of 2011 WIPP’s Central Characterization Project suspended activities in Oak Ridge. In the meantime, DOE and the contractor took over field characterization activities and prepared packages for shipment. When CCP returned to TWPC in October 2013 there were about 3,000 contact-handled waste drums in storage awaiting certification and shipment.
‘We Have a Need to Renegotiate Those Milestones’
Due to the WIPP shutdown, DOE has notified Tennessee regulators that it may not be able to meet all the regulatory milestones related to processing and certification of transuranic waste under the Oak Ridge Reservation Site Treatment Plan. That includes accomplishing by September 2017 final WIPP certification of all remaining contact-handled and remote-handled waste inventory. “As a result of the WIPP impacts we have a need to renegotiate those milestones. We believe that we have a strong position for good cause for renegotiation and we have begun discussions with the regulators and have notified them both formally and informally of our intent to pursue renegotiation of the milestones,” Wilkerson said.
For contact-handled waste, out of an original inventory of 1,500 cubic meters, 96 percent is processed and 68 percent has been shipped offsite for permanent disposal. Remaining waste includes difficult streams. To clear room for additional processing, about 350 drums have been moved so far to the storage facility at ORNL, with more on the way. “We are fortunate that the waste before it is processed at the TWPC is stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in facilities that are able to take this waste back if need be, and that’s what we are going to do,” Wilkerson said.
RH Will Be Moved to Overpacks
For remote-handled waste, DOE is looking to procure concrete overpacks to store the material. “There is approximately 50 percent of the RH inventory that remains that is associated with high neutron dose and we need to use the 72-B canisters with poly shield to be able to control those doses and store the material,” Wilkerson said. “But we are continuing to evaluate a hybrid option for the other 50 percent of the inventory that is associated with gamma radiation by using shielded overpacks to be able to treat the material as contact-handled because this would allow flexibility when we start up for us to be able to resume shipment of RH in case they have limitations in that regard.”
The financial impact will depend on the length of the WIPP outage. “In the near term the most significant impact, which we believe is relatively low compared to the annual operating cost at the TWPC, is the deployment of the new RH storage capability,” Wilkerson said. “In order to mitigate that we have structured the response plan to have minimal impact in ’14 and ’15.” The storage containers will be procured on an as-needed basis to avoid procurement of more than are needed.
DOE Looking at Baseline Changes in TWPC Procurement
DOE is also in the midst of a new procurement for running the TWPC, as the contract for incumbent Wastren Advantage ends in January. “We are implementing changes to the current baseline and possibly contracting response to the WIPP suspension,” Wilkerson said. “So the challenge here is we are going to have to transition to a new contractor at a critical time of change and uncertainty for the new program.”
