The Texas Commission of Environmental Quality issued a set of proposed rules late last week in the Texas Register that would require out-of-state waste to go through volume reduction techniques before entering Waste Control Specialists. In the state legislature’s last session, lawmakers passed a bill on radioactive substances that included some guidelines for protecting the long-term capacity of the site. According to TCEQ, these new rule changes try to address those concerns. “The purpose of this rulemaking is to implement Senate Bill (SB) 347, 83rd Texas Legislature, 2013, and its amendments to Texas Health and Safety Code (THSC), Chapter 401 (also known as the Texas Radiation Control Act (TRCA)) and to add non-substantive changes to rules to ensure the commission’s continued compatibility with the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),” the Texas Register posting said. “This proposed rulemaking also creates new provisions in Chapter 336 for the compact waste disposal facility license holder who may accept nonparty compact waste for disposal at the facility only if it has been volume reduced.”
Specifically, the proposed rule would change regulation §336.739 concerning volume reduction. “The commission proposes new §336.739 to establish new restrictions on the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in Texas, that was generated outside of Texas or Vermont. Those restrictions require that any such waste to be disposed in Texas must have been volume reduced to a certain degree,” the posting said.
WCS: No Big Impact on Operations
The proposed changes would not greatly alter how WCS conducts operations, according to WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald. “First of all, we do a lot of volume reduction now, so it’s not that big of a change,” McDonald said. “Going forward, we will have to do some things with future contracts to make sure we are in compliance with that de-watering language. Overall, it’s what we expected, and I don’t think it will have a significant impact.”
Much of the motivation for the changes reflected concerns for ensuring guaranteed long-term capacity, McDonald added. “It was something that came up in the legislation passed in the last session, the discussion around out of compact waste and the effort to set a cap on that over the lifetime of the facility, which the legislation did do,” he said. “They also had some language about taking all necessary measures to volume reduce on the front end as well. The bigger issue of how much can come in, they address directly in the legislation. We are having these discussions about protecting capacity, so this is seen as a measure to help long-term capacity.”
