Waste Control Specialists has withdrawn a request for an exemption from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store select radioactive waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The exemption became unnecessary after all shipments of transuranic waste to Waste Control Specialists’ storage complex in West Texas were halted when a container of material from Los Alamos was identified as the likely source of the February 2014 radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said by email Tuesday. WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer submitted the withdrawal request on July 21, and the NRC formally closed its review on Aug. 18.
Under a 2012 agreement with the state of New Mexico, DOE pledged to remove 3,706 cubic meters of legacy transuranic waste stored above-ground at the laboratory. Eighty percent of the waste was sent to WIPP before its closure after the radiation incident.
Waste Control Specialists became a backup storage site, and accepted waste shipments from April to May 2014, McDonald said. It requested the exemption on March 28, 2014, seeking allowance to store transuranic waste containing special nuclear materials in levels exceeding critical mass limits as designated under existing federal regulation. However, “the need to take additional drums with higher concentrations never materialized,” McDonald stated, and WCS is now working to ship the Los Alamos waste it does hold to WIPP, which reopened in December.
“As for the TRU waste that WCS did receive during spring of 2014, it is currently being recertified – waste stream by waste stream across the DOE complex – for disposal at WIPP per the site’s new waste acceptance criteria (WAC) and WCS continues to support DOE in preparing that waste for shipment as it becomes ready for disposal,” McDonald wrote.
The company began sending waste shipments to WIPP in April.
