PHOENIX, Ariz. — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the next couple months should issue a draft regulatory basis for a potential rulemaking on disposal of Greater-Than-Class C low-level radioactive waste, a senior official said Monday.

“That’s probably our No. 1 priority right now,” according to John Tappert, director of the NRC’s Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs.

The draft would be opened for public comment, including workshops, with the aim of finalizing the document within six months of publication, Tappert told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing on the sidelines of the 2019 Waste Management Symposia.

The intent of the regulatory basis is to determine whether there is justification to conduct a full update of federal regulations on disposal of GTCC waste by near-surface or other methods that do not involve deep geologic repositories. Current rules require the NRC to sign off on any disposal option other than geologic disposal.

If NRC staff determines that some or all GTCC waste is suitable for near-surface disposal, the commission has directed the agency to proceed with rulemaking. That process, based on the historical timeline for rulemakings, could take two to three years, Tappert said.

The commission began studying the issue following a 2015 inquiry from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regarding state authority for authorizing disposal of GTCC waste. In that case the interested party was Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, a private company that operates several facilities in West Texas for disposal of radioactive and other waste types.

The Department of Energy, which is ultimately responsible for the waste, has said its preferred disposal method is generic commercial sites and/or its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. More recently, it has looked specifically at sending the material to Waste Control Specialists’ Federal Waste Facility.

While NRC staff was previously supposed to publish the GTCC draft regulatory basis six months after publishing the supplemental proposed rule for its separate Part 61 rulemaking, the commission in October directed that the proceedings be decoupled.