The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has hauled away the last of demolition debris from buildings torn down last year at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in Southern California, according to a Tuesday release.
Trucks carrying the waste from buildings within DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center northwest of Los Angeles rolled out on Jan. 26, the DOE said.
The waste is being shipped to EnergySolutions’ low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Utah, according to a spokesperson for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is overseeing cleanup of Santa Susana, including the roughly 450 acres that were leased to DOE for nuclear research. Most of the 2,850-acre site in Simi Valley is controlled by Boeing or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The Atomic Energy Commission, a predecessor of DOE, did nuclear reactor and liquid metal research at the California location starting in the 1950s. Most nuclear-related operations at the property ceased in 1988, according to the DOE. The last of the DOE buildings came down in October 2021, although soil and water remediation at ETEC might stretch into the 2030s.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking comment on a request by Perma-Fix Northwest Richland to export up to 60,000 kilograms of low-level radioactive waste to Germany for disposal.
The waste was generated by medical and pharmaceutical research projects — not nuclear power plants, according to a Jan. 27 notice in the Federal Register. Comments are due by Feb. 28, as are any requests for a public hearing, according to the notice.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission received the Perma-Fix request to amend its export license on Dec. 20, according to the notice. The amendment, which would expire Sept. 1, 2026, would allow the company to export the low-level waste in the form of residual ash and residual metal or non-combustible material.
The notice did not list a timetable for NRC to make a decision.
The company owns a 35-acre Radioactive and Mixed Waste Treatment Facility adjacent to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
