The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Department of Energy, with help from Congress, could save billions of dollars over time by clarifying how high-level radioactive waste (HLW) is defined in statute.
While this is a longstanding issue, GAO urged Congress to set up a Blue Ribbon Commission of experts to tackle the matter, in a report made public Wednesday.
Secondly, GAO recommends DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) to “systematically evaluate the full range of opportunities to treat and dispose of legacy waste associated with reprocessing as something other than HLW.” The government watchdog also wants EM to communicate this information to Congress.
“Until the HLW definition is clarified, EM will continue to face significant barriers to completing its cleanup mission,” GAO wrote. “Given the complexity of this issue [and the threat of litigation], any efforts to revise the HLW definition would benefit from input and ideas from experts across government, industry, and academia.”
In comments, attached to the report, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh said DOE concurs with the recommendations. At the same time, DOE’s nuclear cleanup office can only do so much without Congressional action.
“DOE acknowledges that GAO presented a matter for Congressional consideration to address ambiguities in the definition of HLW in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982,” as amended,” DOE said.
In 2019 during the first Trump administration, DOE reinterpreted its reading of the HLW definition to indicate some high-level waste poses a modest-enough hazard as to allow it to be placed into licensed low-level radioactive waste disposal sites. The state of Washington, where the Hanford state is located, aggressively opposed this reinterpretation. As a result, EM has not attempted to apply this reinterpretation to Hanford waste.
“In a 2020 report, EM estimated that classifying a portion of tank waste as LLW [low-level waste] at its Hanford Site could potentially generate a cost savings of $73 to $210 billion,” GAO said in the report. “By systematically evaluating these opportunities and pursuing them to the maximum extent possible, EM could accelerate its cleanup mission and save at least tens of billions of dollars.”
There are about 90 million gallons of such waste held in underground tanks at DOE Cold War and Manhattan Project sites in a report made public Wednesday.
The waste is linked to reprocessing across the four EM sites where this HLW remains stored: Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the West Valley Demonstration Project. West Valley, located not far from Buffalo, is owned by New York state although DOE bears responsibility for cleanup.
The current definition stems mainly from where the waste originates. GAO said in the report.
The National Academies of Science and other entities have talked about this issue for a long time, according to the GAO report