The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week published a minor amendment to Waste Control Specialists’s state radioactive material license, allowing the company to keep potentially combustible drums of Department of Energy transuranic waste at a commercial site in Andrews County until Dec. 23, 2022.
The amendment proposed Dec. 9 by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) formally pushes the removal deadline for the remaining transuranic waste boxes to Dec. 23, 2022 from Dec. 23, 2020. It would also synchronize Texas’ timeline with the one authorized by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality allowed Waste Control Specialists to hang on to the DOE waste after the company’s state license expired because the company had asked the state agency for a new license before the expiration date, the commission said in January..
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s executive director Toby Baker has determined the “minor” amendment does not pose an environmental and safety threat. The action does not require sign-off by the commission, a spokesman for the Texas agency said Wednesday by email.
The transuranic waste has been at the Texas site for seven years. It was en route to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but after a February 2014 underground radiation leak contaminated the underground disposal site and forced WIPP out of service. Subsequently, it was learned that many of the Los Alamos drums stored at WCS posed a similar ignition risk to the drum involved in the WIPP accident.
Some of that material has been stuck at the WCS Andrews County site ever since and has apparently worn out its welcome. In early 2020, William (Ike) White, then a senior adviser to the DOE Office of Environmental Management, pledged removing the remaining drums from the Texas commercial site would be a top priority for the nuclear cleanup office.
Last September, however, White acknowledged due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic, DOE would not be able to move all the Los Alamos transuranic waste out of Texas in 2020. One shipment was sent to WIPP in February, the first shipment since July 2019.
Waste Control Specialists’ $29-million contract for interim storage of the transuranic material currently is scheduled to expire June 7. DOE Wednesday declined to comment about the timing of an extension. Likewise, the company did not comment by deadline.
