The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is scheduled to vote July 1 whether to approve the reduction in a charge for disposal of radioactive waste at a state-owned facility operated by Waste Control Specialists.
The rulemaking would amend the Texas Administrative Code’s section on low-level radioactive waste disposal fees, specifically reducing the curie inventory charge from $0.40 per millicurie (mCi) of radioactivity to $0.05 per millicurie. That would be applied to waste shipped to the Compact Waste Facility managed by Waste Control Specialists at its disposal property in Andrews County.
The TCEQ executive director has “determined that the reduction in the mCi is appropriate at this time,” according to the state agency.
The set amount is the highest curie inventory charge for generators from the member states of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact and the lowest charge for waste from all other states. Texas and Vermont are the only members to the compact, but more than 30 additional states can ship low-level waste to the facility.
Waste Control Specialists requested the curie charge reduction to offset increases in other charges in order to help the facility remain competitive in the disposal marketplace. The Texas Legislature in 2017 passed legislation that reduced certain disposal charges and fees at the Compact Waste Facility, but those measures expired on Sept. 1, 2019. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last year vetoed domestic-violence legislation that carried an amendment extending the rebates until Sept. 1, 2021.
If approved by the three-member commission, the TCEQ rulemaking would take effect on July 23.
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists operates one of four licensed commercial facilities in the United States for disposal of low-level waste. It has struggled with millions of dollars of losses since beginning waste operatoins in 2012, and has looked for options to raise the Compact Waste Facility out of the red. Representatives of several regional low-level waste disposal compacts have also in recent weeks discussed potential means for supporting the facility.
The Navy on June 9 awarded APTIM Federal Services LLC a $129 million contract for the dismantlement and disposal of the Surface Ship Support Barge (SSSB).
The SSSB is a “radiologically controlled” dockside refueling facility built from a converted Navy tanker used to disassemble spent nuclear fuel for shipment within a water pool. The Navy has been interested in dismantling the facility for years as it is now obsolete.
The contract covers engineering planning efforts, dismantlement, transport and disposal of the SSSB. Work will mostly occur in Mobile, Ala. (65%), and is expected to be finished by June 2023.
The Navy said the contract was competitively procured but with just one offer received.
APTIM Federal Services also decommissioned the MH-1A nuclear reactor on the STURGIS barge, under contract to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The company is providing engineering design for utility segregation for the SM-1A reactor at the Army’s Fort Greely in Alaska.
Nora Khalil is leaving the National Nuclear Security Administration to become the lead Republican staffer on the Senate Appropriations panel that writes the agency’s annual budget bill each year, a source familiar with the move said.
Khalil is now the agency’s associate administrator for external affairs. She will replace Adam DeMella, who is leaving Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) staff to work in Washington for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Alexander chairs the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, but the septuagenarian senator and former Tennessee governor is not standing for re-election this year. The subcommittee gets first crack each year at the spending bill that covers DOE, its semiautonomous NNSA, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
From The Wires
From The Canadian Press: Advocacy organizations in Canada call for pause on government activities on multiple radioactive waste disposal facilities.
