Representatives from low-level radioactive waste disposal site host states continued to prod the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday for additional oversight of the generators that ship them waste, even as they complained of being underfunded and short-staffed. At a meeting with all five NRC Commissioners yesterday, Earl Fordham, Chair-Elect of the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors, said the disposal sites in some circumstances are having to trust that generators correctly package and classify their waste shipments. “The new Branch Technical Position [on concentration averaging] continues to allow blending of gamma-controlling isotopes with [others], and the sited states are saying these things come into the disposal sites typically in the area of tens of thousands of rems per hour. It’s not something that the site operator can do a package inspection on; it’s dose prohibitive,” Fordham said. “So we have to acknowledge the fact that hopefully it was done properly, the rad software was functioning properly. There are some issues there that sited states have, that they have no regulatory oversight of those people that are outside of our jurisdictional boundaries.”
Members of the Low Level Waste Forum wrote to the NRC with similar urges for stronger authority in February comments on the Branch Technical Position (BTP). Utah, South Carolina and Texas wrote that producing the BTP as guidance—therefore allowing all Agreement States to adopt its criteria differently—would further the differences in waste classification and packaging practices in generating states versus disposal states. Rusty Lundberg, director of Utah’s Division of Radiation Control, said in a letter Feb. 17 that his state was concerned because “disposal states will live with the long-term fate and consequences of LLRW disposal,” but “are without legal jurisdiction or reach to oversee or enforce waste characterization/classification by the generator.” Though the BTP suggests that in case of any conflict the disposal state requirements prevail, “unfortunately, this posture is unenforceable, in that the disposal state has no legal jurisdiction over the out-of-state generator, and cannot directly enforce its WAC/license requirements beyond its borders,” Lundberg said. However, despite these misgivings, Alice Hamilton Rogers, Chair with CRCPD, said yesterday that Agreement States still want the NRC to be lax about determining to what degree states would have to adopt NRC rules. “For most Agreement State directors, harmony is achieved when the needs of the state and the needs of the overall nation are met. We ask for your continued work in allowing states flexibility in compatibility,” Hamilton Rogers said.