The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reopened the comment period for a draft final guidance on requests for alternative disposal of very low-level radioactive waste.
The comment period, which initially closed on Dec. 18, will now stretch to Jan. 17, according to a Dec. 21 notice in the Federal Register. Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2017-0198; or by mail to May Ma, NRC Office of Administration, Mail Stop: OWFN-2-A13, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001.
Very low-level waste is an informal term for material with naturally occurring radionuclides or some other form of “residual radioactivity,” according to the NRC. This waste form is not required to be sent to the four licensed U.S. disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste, but with NRC approval can be disposed of at locations such as hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills or a licensee’s property. The NRC also cites the potential for recycling and reuse of material.
The draft document is intended to provide guidance to NRC staff on documenting, evaluating, and determining whether to approve requests for alternative disposal of very-low-level waste. It is an updated version of an interim guidance from 2009, covering operational matters including the technical review of the application, coordination with state agencies and disposal sites, and carrying out communications plans.
U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) have thrown their weight behind an Oregon company’s plans to build and operate a medical isotope production plant in Missouri.
Corvallis, Ore.-based Northwest Medical Isotopes (NWMI) plans to build a 70,000-square-foot facility at the Discovery Ridge Research Park in Columbia, Mo. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a Jan. 23 evidentiary hearing at its headquarters in Rockville, Md., on the company’s application for a construction permit for the molybdenum-99 production facility. With approval from the commission and other regulatory bodies, including a subsequent NRC operating license, NWMI management hopes to start work on the site later this year and begin operations in 2020.
Wyden and McCaskill noted in a Dec. 14 letter to the three sitting NRC commissioners that the United States has no current domestic capacity for manufacturing molybdenum-99, which decays into technetium-99m, an isotope used in medical imaging for cancer and other diseases. The NWMI plant is expected to provide roughly 50 percent of U.S. demand, the lawmakers said.
“The issuance of a construction permit for this facility would be a significant milestone in obtaining a domestic supply for this important national radiopharmaceutical technology,” Wyden and McCaskill wrote.
A number of officials in Missouri were similarly supportive in letters to the NRC.
“The project falls within the strategic plans for the State of Missouri in that it creates employment at a high wage and investment that will provide great benefit to the local taxing entities,” Terrance Maglich, project manager at the Missouri Department of Economic Research, wrote in a Dec. 12 letter. “The project will also create a product that can save lives and possibly add to the development of other lifesaving medical products.”
Ahead of the upcoming hearing, NRC staff and NWMI have also submitted long lists of answers to pre-hearing questions from the commission.
From the Wires
From Reuters: The Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, scheduled for permanent closure in May 2019, was shut down temporarily Thursday during a blizzard.
