Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/28/2015
Industry and staff both agreed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be better served to allow the state of Texas to regulate the disposal of Greater-Than-Class C radioactive waste than have the NRC oversee it, they said during a Aug. 13 commission briefing on GTCC disposal.
Waste Control Specialists last year petitioned the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to allow for the near-surface disposal of the waste stream at its West Texas facility, but currently, only the NRC can license a facility to take GTCC waste. However, because Texas has agreement state status with the NRC, TCEQ wrote to the commission for clarification on its potential ability to license a facility to take the waste.
In response, NRC staff wrote a position paper that recommended the commission authorize Texas to license and regulate the disposal of GTCC waste due to its familiarity with the site. That message was echoed during the briefing.
“After careful examination, we did reach the conclusion that Texas could license this,” said Larry Camper, NRC director of the Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs. “It is far more efficient. The resource estimate that we provided in the paper would be a factor of two more costly if we did it versus the state of Texas. They are intimately familiar with the site already, and they have a very successful program currently, and they have already reached out to us for a very cooperative arrangement to proceed ahead to develop a proposal, if the commission goes that way, that hopefully it ultimately would pass commission satisfaction.”
Industry also pointed to the efficiency of having Texas regulate the waste, compared to NRC, as reason enough for the decision.
“The staff clearly points out that for the NRC to take on that role, you are talking about a significant investment of resources,” said Janet Schlueter, Nuclear Energy Institute senior director for radiation and materials safety. “That is pretty difficult to justify, from my perspective, when Texas has the program in place, technical expertise. NRC has an oversight role. They are already overseeing the program, they will continue to do so. So, why would the NRC staff then take on that huge burden of a steep learning curve for becoming familiar with a portion, again, a portion of the site and having two regulators on-site, which could confusing for any licensee?”
Texas Wants to License, But With NRC Oversight
TCEQ Director of Radioactive Materials Charles Maguire, meanwhile, expressed the state’s desire to license the facility for GTCC, albeit with NRC oversight. “It would be fair to say, that if we are going to have Greater-Than-Class C waste streams being disposed of in Andrews County, Texas, I think we would prefer to be the licensing authority,” Maguire said.
Maguire suggested NRC staff could act almost in a peer-review oversight role.
“I think that’s the area where we would expect to have lots of integrated conversations with NRC staff in terms of looking at the kinds of license conditions, the kinds of requirements that would really allow us to turn around and say as the state of Texas, working with our federal colleagues, that we have applied the best science we have available,” Maguire said. “I don’t think Texas would want to turn its back on any source of good science to help it make those decisions. And so certainly, coming to NRC would be a very active part of the way we see putting together a license, should we ever get to that point.”
