Leaving problem waste from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) at the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) site in Texas for two more years should not cause any significant environmental risks, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
With the current extension to a 2014 order set to expire in days, the NRC is publishing an environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact (FONSI) in today’s Federal Register for leaving the potentially combustible transuranic waste in place until Dec. 23, 2020. The NRC said no environmental impact statement is needed after it determined continued storage should not increase radiological risk to the public and that worker exposure should remain within occupational limits.
The document is a necessary step before NRC staff can formally issue a decision on the extension, agency spokesman David McIntyre said by email.
A team headed by the Energy Department, with personnel from WCS, the NRC, the state of Texas, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is trying to come up with a longer-term plan for the waste. The order marking WCS the short-term home for the waste was previously extended in 2016.
The TRU waste has been at WCS in Andrews County, Texas, since April 2014. That material had been bound for DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, but the facility closed two months earlier following a radiation release linked to waste from Los Alamos. In June 2014, Waste Control Specialists got word from DOE that some of its LANL waste might be similar to the waste that caused the WIPP episode.
Of the 582 Los Alamos drums or barrels received at WCS, 305 have been found safe and shipped to WIPP for disposal, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman Brian McGovern said in August. The other 277 remain at WCS; of those, 113 show traits consistent with the problem drums from Los Alamos.
In March 2017, DOE retained Idaho-based SUNSI JV to analyze options to enable the combustible waste to be shipped to WIPP. That report is believed to be complete and submitted to the Energy Department, but has not been released.
