By John Stang
Wyoming could become the 38th agreement state to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, taking over some authority for management of radioactive materials otherwise held by the federal agency.
If the commission approves the request from Gov. Matthew Mead, his state would assume responsibility for licensing, rulemaking, inspection, and enforcement of certain uranium and thorium milling operations and management and disposal of mill tailings waste from those operations, according to an NRC press release Tuesday.
Fourteen distinct radioactive-material licenses would be shifted to Wyoming’s oversight.
In deciding whether to make Wyoming an agreement state, the NRC “must determine that Wyoming’s radiation control program is adequate to protect public health and safety, and is compatible with the NRC’s regulations,” the release says. The process appears to be relatively quick, with the governor and NRC commissioners tentatively scheduled to sign the agreement in September to transfer the authority to the state.
Wyoming has 15 uranium sites and no permitted thorium facilities, said Ryan Sherman, the state’s uranium recovery program manager. A rare earths mining company is considering applying for a thorium-related permit, but has not done so yet.
In 2017, the Wyoming State Legislature requested the governor seek agreement state status for 14 of its 15 uranium operations. The rationale was that the state and NRC permitting processes are duplicative, and the Wyoming’s uranium industry told the state government that complying with two similar regulatory processes — including two sets of fees — is burdensome, Sherman said.
Currently, Wyoming has five operating in-situ recovery operations for uranium in which a mixture of water, baking-soda-like chemicals, and oxygen are pumped into the ground to pick up uranium, and pumped back to the surface and through a pipe to a processing plant. Another two in-situ recovery operations have been licensed but have not yet been built.
A conventional uranium mill is in standby status. A mill crushes the uranium-laced ore into pebbles and dust from which the uranium is chemically extracted. The other six sites are currently being decommissioned.
The 15th site, for which the NRC would keep jurisdiction, has been closed since 1982. The state is cleaning it up under the NRC’s supervision and wants to keep that arrangement, Sherman said.
Wyoming provides roughly 60 percent of the uranium produced in the United States, with 18 other states providing the rest, according the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy. However, the United States produces only 7 percent of the uranium used for fuel in the nation’s nuclear plants, according to the EIA.
Wyoming has no nuclear power plants, which in any case would remain under NRC oversight. The agency would also not relinquish jurisdiction over use of select nuclear materials by federal entities in Wyoming and nuclear material uses separate from uranium and thorium milling operations.
The proposed agreement is available as of Tuesday in the Federal Register. The public has until July 26 to comment on the agreement via regulations.gov, at Docket ID NRC-2018-0104. After the agreement is published four times in June and July in the Federal Register for public input, the NRC staff will review any comments. If none are significant, NRC will proceed with analyzing the agreement, an agency spokesman said.
The other 37 NRC agreement states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
