The Department of Energy has denied a local advisory group’s request to make treated liquid waste at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina eligible for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The request, submitted in July by the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB), asked the Energy Department to recharacterize the material as transuranic (TRU) waste — material contaminated with radioactive elements during activities such as processing of spent reactor fuel or nuclear weapons production. Under federal law, WIPP is the sole disposal site for waste of this type from the DOE complex.
In a Sept. 7 response letter, SRS Manager Michael Budney told CAB Chair Gil Allensworth that the Energy Department cannot accept certain parts of the board recommendation. That includes the central request that DOE determine what infrastructure and regulatory actions would be necessary for WIPP to receive and dispose of the waste.
According to the CAB, the material is currently classified as high-level waste due to its origin as a radioactive byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons production at Savannah River. But once treated through a separations process known as vitrification, it becomes low-activity waste that is far less harmful.
Still, getting WIPP to accept the material would be more trouble than it is currently worth, according to DOE. “Until existing laws and regulations are modified to allow a risk-based approach to the classification of the waste contained in the canisters, it is premature to expend limited DOE resources on this item due to the higher priority needs at both DOE sites,” Budney wrote.
The Energy Department did approve other sections of the CAB’s request, including to update the board next year on how much treated waste at Savannah River could be recharacterized as TRU waste. That presentation will also include previous considered concepts for waste recharacterization.
