The public comment period for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulemaking that would simplify the very low-level waste disposal process ended Wednesday with over 6,000 comments.
Announced in March, the interpretive rule would allow the waste to be disposed of at facilities without Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses. The NRC would grant “specific exemptions” overriding current requirements mandating the unlicensed facilities to receive approval with each shipment of the waste.
NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the commission plans to come to a decision on the rule by the end of the year.
Very low-level waste (VLLW) is the informal term for the least radioactive form of Class A low-level waste, which is the least radioactive form of all four classes of nuclear waste. It includes material with naturally occurring radionuclides or other residual radioactivity, which is generally considered safe for disposal in landfills not specifically designed for radioactive wastes.
Some examples of VLLW include incinerator ash from research facilities, demolition debris such as concrete and metal, soil, and other garbage from nuclear fuel facilities or decommissioning nuclear power plants, according to the NRC.
Typically, licensed material is supposed to go to licensed facilities, under current NRC rules. This interpretive rule would serve as an exception to that policy.
Four commercial facilities are currently licensed to accept such waste: EnergySolutions sites in South Carolina and Utah, Waste Control Specialists’ operation in Texas, and US Ecology’s facility in the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
The comment period was scheduled to end April 20, but was extended twice in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Naysayers, who made up the vast majority of the thousands of comments submitted over the seven-month comment period, worry the rulemaking creates an opportunity for waste to contaminate their communities without their notice. The rule doesn’t require the NRC to make notifications when the waste is moved somewhere.
Others are concerned the rule doesn’t align with typical NRC rulemaking policy.
“The NRC is trying to bypass normal rules for changing federal regulations,” a statement from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service said. “NRC claims it is merely ‘reinterpreting’ longstanding regulations, not actually changing them. After 80 years of requiring anyone possessing manmade nuclear waste to have a license authorizing them to store or dispose of radioactive materials and waste, the NRC wants to authorize it to go to places without a license by changing the guidance, not the actual rule.”
Under the rule, applicants would become “authorized recipients” of the waste with a specific exemption for disposal allowing them to avoid the existing case-by-case requirement mandated by the NRC. It would be facilitated under NRC provisions for transfers of radioactive material to exempt persons. That would be carried out under existing provisions in NRC regulations for transfers of radioactive material to exempt persons in NRC agreement states and those in which the NRC remains the primary regulator of radioactive materials.
NRC has said that the rule is simply a means through which the NRC can make the VLLW disposal process more efficient.
