The Department of Energy this week formalized its plan to eventually ship up to 10,000 gallons of wastewater from the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina to a commercial facility in Texas for disposal, under the classification of low-level radioactive waste.
The department said it will begin within 12 months by shipping no more than 8 gallons of recycle wastewater to Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, where it will be combined with a concrete-like grout and deposited in a near-surface disposal facility. That would effectively be a trial run for retrieval, transport, and disposal of the rest of the waste in the 2030s, when Savannah River will be without another means of processing the material.
This also provides a test case for DOE’s updated interpretation of the statutory term “high-level waste,” which it says should be based on radiological contents rather than origin. High-level radioactive waste by law must be buried in a federal geologic repository, which does not yet exist, while low-level waste can be sent to commercial facilities.
The Waste Control Specialists “facility has safely and routinely received material from around the country for years,” DOE said in a statement Friday. “Disposal of this low-level waste meets the facility’s waste acceptance criteria and is fully protective of public health, safety, and the environment.”
The Energy Department this week issued its final environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact of its intended approach for disposal of the Savannah River wastewater, according to an Aug. 4 notice from Elizabeth Connell, associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
The documents were the result of a public process dating to October 2018.
The Energy Department said its waste interpretation could be applied to defense reprocessing waste with radionuclide concentration limits within the regulatory standard for Class C low-level waste (the most hazardous of the three official federal classifications for that waste type); or to waste that does not have to go into deep geologic disposal “and meets the performance objectives of a disposal facility as demonstrated through a performance assessment conducted in accordance with applicable requirements.”
That could cover some radioactive tank waste also stranded at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state and Idaho National Laboratory, according to the Energy Communities Alliance. The Washington, D.C.-based organization, which represents communities near Energy Department facilities, says federal estimates indicate the move could cut $40 billion in Environmental Management costs for storage facilities and operations.
“ECA is pleased to see DOE making progress, we look forward to engaging with them as they take this small step forward and consider what comes next,” Kara Colton, the organization’s director of nuclear energy programs, said by email Friday.
Others have been more wary, worried the reinterpretation opens the door for unsafe means of dealing with highly radioactive material. Led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the lower chamber’s 2021 National Defense Authorization Act would extend by one year a prohibition from the last version of the policy bill a prohibition on reclassifying any high-level waste from Washington state.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) converts radioactive liquid waste generated by nuclear-weapon operations at Savannah River into a glass form for on-site storage and eventual disposal. That operation produces recycle wastewater that largely consists of condensates from glassification, along with process samples, flushes, and cleaning solutions. “The DWPF recycle wastewater is currently managed as [high-level waste] because it has radionuclides from reprocessing waste as a result of DWPF operations or storage in tanks that contain residual quantities of reprocessing waste,” according to this week’s DOE notice.
Savannah River today either places the wastewater into its tank farm or uses it for salt dissolution or sludge washing. But DOE projects it will not be able to send the water to the tank farm for the three years leading up to the anticipated closure of the DWPF in 2034. That is because the Salt Waste Processing Facility, which processes salt waste from the tank farms, is due to complete its mission in 2031.
The Energy Department considered four options for disposal of the waste: no action, keeping it at Savannah River until some other means of treatment could be established; grouting the wastewater at Savannah River, then shipping it to either Waste Control Specialists or another commercial low-level waste facility in Clive, Utah, operated by EnergySolutions; shipping the waste in water form to Waste Control Specialists or EnergySolutions for stabilization and disposal; or sending the material to a separate facility for processing and then on to disposal.
The final environmental assessment determined any of the options would have little to no effect in the areas of air quality, human health, waste management, and transportation.
The recycle wastewater is believed to be Class B low-level waste. Of the two disposal facilities considered, only Waste Control Specialists is licensed to accept Class A, B. and C wastes, DOE said.
The Energy Department expects to begin retrieving the 8 gallons of wastewater as early as Aug. 26, according to the notice. Beyond the 12-month window, there was no immediate detail about the schedule for shipping and disposing of the material at the Waste Control Specialists operation.
Details about contracting for the service were not immediately available. The Dallas-based company declined to comment Friday.
