The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022.
About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been stranded at Waste Control Specialists (WCS) since early 2014 after being diverted there rather than sent on to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the WCS request for an extension on Dec. 7. Two days later, the company asked the state regulator for the same extension, submitting an application to amend its license to extend custody of the waste until Dec. 23, 2022, a Texas commission spokesman said via email this week.
Waste Control Specialists is in compliance with its license because the company has submitted a timely application to the commission to amend the license, said Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman Brian McGovern.
The containers have been stuck at WCS after it became known that some of the drums shared traits with another container from Los Alamos that overheated and burst, causing an underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February 2014. The underground disposal facility for transuranic waste would stay offline for about three years as a result of the accident.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has grown tired of being the indefinite host for the drums and has been pushing the DOE Office of Environmental Management for more than a year to remove this transuranic waste.
William (Ike) White, senior adviser for the Office of Environmental Management, announced early last year that DOE planned to start moving the remaining drums out by the end of 2020. That was, however, before the COVID-19 pandemic started to have widespread impact in the United States in March. The DOE would subsequently acknowledge in September that removal would not occur in 2020.
The DOE has not submitted a written plan to the state with a schedule setting forth a specific date for the removal of the remaining transuranic waste, McGovern said.
