While the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) hopes the Department of Energy will readjust its classification of high-level radioactive waste, it has not forgotten the federal agency still owes Congress a report on the issue.
The ECA asked the House and Senate Armed Services committees on Tuesday to “attempt to require” compliance with a provision of the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that directed DOE to submit a report on the potential impact of reclassifying certain defense nuclear waste as something other than high-level.
The Energy Department is more than a year late in filing the report, which was due Feb. 1, 2018.
The Washington, D.C.-based Energy Communities Alliance represents local governments near DOE weapons complex sites, some of which are storing the high-level waste in question. In the letter, signed by ECA Chairman Ron Woody, county executive for Roane County, Tenn., the organization asks to meet with the committees to discuss the issue.
Congress has said HLW is “highly radioactive” material generated by reprocessing spent fuel – which involves separating contents in irradiated nuclear fuel and target materials, such as plutonium. Such waste is described as extremely radioactive and long-lived.
The material from nuclear reprocessing is now stored at places such as the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory, and the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York. By law, the material must ultimately be placed in a federally managed geologic repository.
In October, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management requested public comment on how the agency should interpret the definition of high-level waste. The comment period ended Jan. 9. The Energy Department has not yet published any hard data on the amount of high-level waste within the weapons complex and how much might be reclassified under its proposal.
The Energy Communities Alliance also wants a legislative change to the high-level waste interpretation that would not be subject to reversal by a future presidential administration. In a September 2017 report, ECA said over-classification of HLW increases Energy Department costs by billions of dollars in storage costs pending availability of a permanent deep geologic repository such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The ECA and groups such as the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council and the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG) favor DOE’s proposal to classify HLW based more on its radiological risks than its origin. The organizations say a significant amount of material is now classified as high-level although its radiological traits suggest it could be treated as something less restrictive, and sent to existing disposal sites.
Proponents of a revised HLW interpretation have hinted some material now treated as high-level might be suitable for disposal at sites such as the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and the privately- owned Waste Control Specialists site in Texas.
The measure is opposed by groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the state governments of Oregon and Washington state. Among other things, critics say the DOE proposal is contrary to law because Congress has already spoken to the issue. They also accuse DOE of trying to simply define away its high-level waste problem.
