Kenneth Fletcher
RW Monitor
2/27/2015
As the Department of Energy hopes to launch a pilot program for deep borehole disposal of radioactive waste next fiscal year, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said this week that Hanford’s cesium-strontium capsules could be a good candidate for borehole disposal. The 1,936 high activity capsules stored at Hanford’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility have been named one of the site’s highest risks, in part due to vulnerability to earthquakes. A borehole demonstration project “could be very interesting for Hanford because about a third of the activity at site is cesium-strontium capsules, which are very small in diameter and could be very well suited perhaps for much earlier disposal through a borehole approach,” Moniz said at a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing. “I don’t know. We have to do the demonstration project, do the science, which is what we want to do in 2016. That’s another interesting direction which could be very material for Hanford.”
DOE proposed creating a new Used Fuel Disposition subprogram that would explore alternative disposal options for DOE-managed high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel in its Fiscal Year 2016 budget request. As part of the new program, DOE has requested $18 million in FY’16 for research and development work on deep borehole disposal. DOE plans to conduct a field test at a volunteer site that will include drilling a characterization borehole. The demonstration project would not use any actual waste material, but instead would likely use a heater to simulate high level waste.
The boreholes proposed would be about 5 kilometers deep with a diameter of about 17 inches at the bottom. Officials have said in the past that Hanford’s capsules could be a match for disposal in boreholes. After putting casing in the hole and a waste package around the waste form, that would allow for a 12-inch waste form—too small for spent nuclear fuel or existing vitrified waste canisters but the right size for small packages such as the cesium-strontium capsules.
Given the risk at the aging facility the capsules are stored in at Hanford, DOE has recently placed a priority on moving the material into dry storage. However, no schedule has been set for that, though in 2003 DOE solicited an initial round of bids for moving them into dry storage, an effort that was shelved due to other pressing cleanup concerns. DOE has a summer 2017 milestone with the Washington Department of Ecology to propose a schedule for dispositioning the capsules. Given the shutdown of Yucca Mountain and lack of a final repository for the waste identified, boreholes could provide a potential disposal alternative.
