The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is taking comments this month on the Energy Department’s annual update to its cleanup plans for the Idaho National Laboratory complex.
The comment deadline on DOE’s draft 2019 version of its Site Treatment Plan for the 890-square-mile national laboratory expires at 5 p.m. local time on Dec. 28, according to a notice on the DEQ website.
The 127-page draft plan and accompanying 19-page report spell out how DOE intends to comply with Federal Facility Compliance Act standards for managing mixed wastes at INL. The yearly update covers changes to planning milestones and waste treatment plans for INL.
The Idaho DEQ must approve or conditionally approve the new Site Treatment Plan before it can be modified.
Changes proposed in this year’s draft involve updates to the rate of transuranic waste shipments to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, DEQ official Brian English said in an email. The Energy Department adopted tougher waste acceptance criteria for WIPP following a February 2014 radiation release at the underground site. The INL’s Idaho Cleanup Project won certification under the tougher standards in May.
The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) could face fines from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) for reportedly sending construction waste to a nearby public landfill without proper documentation.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported last week that NMED has threatened to fine LANL for making several shipments of construction waste to the Caja del Rio landfill in Santa Fe between 2015 and 2017. Each violation could result in a daily fine of $10,000, according to a Nov. 5 letter from the state cited by the newspaper.
Los Alamos is allowed to send nonhazardous waste to local commercial landfills and played down the issue as a largely administrative matter, involving inadequate documentation.
“Of the thousands of hazardous waste containers that we safely ship each year, four of them from 2015 to 2017 have been determined by the Laboratory to have previously unreported administrative discrepancies,” a LANL spokesperson said by email Dec. 3.
“We are analyzing our waste characterization process to identify process improvements to assist us develop more accurate and complete shipping manifests,” the official added.
The construction debris was generated by former LANL management and operations contractor Los Alamos National Security. The vendor was replaced on Nov. 1 by Triad National Security, while Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos became the lab’s legacy cleanup vendor this spring.
A copy of the enforcement letter could not immediately be located on the NMED website, and a spokesperson for the state agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The national laboratory expects to respond to the state’s letter in the near future.
A Hanford Advisory Board meeting scheduled in Richland, Wash., for Dec. 5-6 was canceled after President Donald Trump declared Wednesday a national day of mourning for former President George H.W. Bush. Federal were closed and federal employees had the day off.
Bush died Nov. 30 at age 94.
The Hanford Advisory Board meeting is not expected to be rescheduled. Instead, the agenda items are likely to be rolled over to the board’s next full meeting, set for Feb. 13-14.
The agenda for this week’s meeting included considering advice to the Department of Energy on its proposed change to the interpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste. The board also planned a discussion and possible issuance of a “white paper” on the assumptions and scenarios included in System Plan 8 that DOE issued in 2017. The Tri-Party Agreement governing cleanup at the former plutonium production plant requires updated system plans every three years and are based on computer modeling of rough cost and schedule estimates for completion of retrieval and treatment of Hanford’s radioactive tank waste.
Separately, the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subbcomnmittee also postponed a Wednesday hearing on advanced nuclear reactors. Speakers at the hearing were to include Edward McGinnis, principal deputy assistant secretary in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
