SUMMERLIN, NEV — The Department of Energy should in June provide a timeline for removing long-stranded drums of transuranic waste from a commercial storage site in Andrews County, a Texas regulator said here Tuesday.
“They are moving forward with getting the building ready to eventually move the waste,” Ashley Forbes, deputy director of the radioactive materials division at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said in answer to a question from Exchange Monitor at the Radwaste Summit 2.0.
Following her presentation to the conference, Forbes said the Texas attorney general’s office has been in contact with the DOE Office of Environmental Management about the stranded waste.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last month no significant impact would result from moving 74 containers of potentially-ignitable transuranic waste, originally from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, from one area of the Waste Control Specialists site to another.
That relocation could set the stage for DOE to start removing the remaining drums stuck in Texas since 2014. Waste Control Specialists and DOE would build a new enclosure to prepare the waste for a trip out of Texas.
The containers ended up at Waste Control Specialists for what was supposed to be a short-term stopover after the February 2014 underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
But DOE soon discovered some of the containers sent to Texas had potential ignition traits similar to the Los Alamos drum that overheated and ruptured at WIPP. The disposal site was basically closed for three years as a result of the accident.
Texas has been saying since 2019 the containers are no longer welcome and that DOE must remove the transuranic waste from the Lone Star state.
After her presentation, Forbes said if the drums were going to ignite it would have happened by now and DOE, as the federal generator of the waste, has authority to remove the hazardous designation. Forbes also believes that turnover in DOE cleanup middle management has drawn out the process.
