The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says continued storage of potentially-combustible transuranic waste at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas until Dec, 31, 2024, should not result in a significant environmental impact.
The Friday finding of no significant impact in the Federal Register clears the way for continued stopgap storage of up to 74 remaining containers that came from Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014. The drums ended up at Waste Control Specialists (WCS) after an overheated Los Alamos drum caused an underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico in February 2014.
WIPP would stay offline for about three years. Although most Los Alamos drums have moved to WIPP from WCS since 2017, others remain while the feds figure out if they can be shipped safely.
Roughly a year ago, DOE extended a WCS contract for continued interim storage of the problematic waste. The current $22-million agreement between DOE and Waste Control Specialists pays the private company for keeping the waste into September 2024, according to an online procurement document.
In April 2021, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reluctantly approved a minor amendment to the WCS state radioactive material license, allowing the drums to stay put in Andrews County until December 2022, a move that came a few months after the NRC’s blessing of the December 2022 date.
In November 2019, Texas told DOE it has grown tired of keeping the Los Alamos transuranic waste containers and said it wanted DOE to move them out-of-state by December 2020. William (Ike) White, senior adviser for DOE’s Environmental Management office replied his agency is serious about moving the waste. But by September 2020, White acknowledged the technical challenges posed by the drums together with the COVID-19 pandemic, would further delay the relocation effort.
