The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to move ahead with completing a key document on disposal of Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste rather than waiting on an upcoming milestone in another proceeding.
The regulator had previously planned to issue a draft regulatory basis for a potential rulemaking on GTCC waste disposal six months after publishing supplemental rules for its separate Part 61 rulemaking on LLRW disposal. That publication is now expected in early 2019.
“Given the long pendency of the proposed revisions to 10 CFR Part 61, the staff should decouple to the extent practicable the issuance of the draft Regulatory Basis … from Commission action on Part 61. This decoupling would allow for earlier public engagement on staff’s analysis of any potential regulatory barriers to the disposal of Greater than Class C waste,” NRC Secretary to the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook wrote in a memo Tuesday to Executive Director for Operations Margaret Doane.
A schedule for developing the GTCC waste disposal regulatory basis is still being developed, an NRC spokesman said Wednesday.
The memo was issued the same day the Department of Energy preliminarily proposed to ship all GTCC and GTCC-like waste for permanent disposal at Waste Control Specialists’ facility in Andrews County, Texas. That approach would be formalized in a record of decision to be issued at a later date.
The Energy Department is required under federal law from 1985 to dispose of GTCC waste, LLRW with a radionuclide concentration greater than Class C waste. The total stock of current and future GTCC and GTCC-like waste is expected to grow to 12,000 cubic meters, held at government and commercial facilities with no disposal pathway to date.
Texas environmental law presently does not allow for disposal of GTCC waste in the state. Regulations from 1989 also say GTCC waste must be disposed of in a geologic repository licensed by the NRC unless another option receives agency approval.
