Waste Control Specialists has withdrawn a request for an exemption from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store select radioactive waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.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 the Energy Department nuclear-weapon facility was identified as the likely source of the February 2014 radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant further south in in New Mexico, WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said by email Tuesday.
Waste Control Specialists 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 received more than 100 barrels of transuranic waste from Los Alamos.
The company 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.
The Energy Department in April extended WCS’ contract to store the waste, though the terms of the agreement were not made public. The NRC has authorized the company to store the containers through 2018.
“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 stated.
Through Aug. 10, the company had made at least six shipments of waste to WIPP since the underground mine reopened for storage in April. The number of containers transported to date was not immediately known.
With WIPP again open for business, there is no sign that additional transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory would be directed to Waste Control Specialists.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and “WCS are working to get the Los Alamos waste out of WCS,” a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said by email this week. “Since the facility is not licensed to dispose of TRU waste, it no longer wants to take LANL’s excess. That’s why they want to withdraw the exemption.”
