The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., shipped low-level waste to the Nevada National Security Site in May for the first time in nearly two years after the desert site reinstated a certification that was yanked in 2019 following disclosure that Y-12 had sent 32 containers worth of improperly labelled waste to the former test site.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board mentioned the shipment, sent out the first week of May, in a recent Oak Ridge site report.
The milestone had been on the weapons complex’s radar for a few months since Robert Boehlecke, DOE’s Nevada program manager for the Office of Environmental Management, said at a March trade show that he had all but cleared Y-12 to resume shipments.
From 2013 to 2018, Y-12 sent nine shipments of mislabeled waste, totaling 32 containers, to the Nevada National Security Site. On July 2, 2019, then-Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette informed Nevada officials that the shipments may have contained something other than the allowed low-level waste. DOE eventually characterized the non-compliant content as weapons-related material.
DOE said Y-12 had not previously written strict rules for disposing of weapons-related materials. A 2020 DOE report ordered by Brouillette found that this problem was not common at other nuclear sites.
Meanwhile, it was not clear at press time whether DOE and the state of Nevada had finalized a previously reported settlement related to last decade’s non-compliant shipments.
