DOE’s Nuclear Cleanup Office Still Prepping Plans for LANL Waste in Texas

PHOENIX –The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is still drafting its response to a Texas state agency on plans for removal of potentially combustible drums of radioactive material from Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Andrews County.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) wants a federal plan by the end of this month for removal of the transuranic waste, Senior DOE Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said here Monday on the sidelines of the Waste Management Symposia. He did not offer any details on status of the plan.

White has promised DOE will do its best to meet Texas’s request to remove the waste by the end of 2020.

Waste Control Specialists has held the drums since April 2014, about two months after a radiological leak underground halted operations at the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.

The leak would prompt WIPP to suspend waste emplacement for about three years, and the TRU waste from Los Alamos ended up at Waste Control Specialists when it could not be disposed of.

The drums were originally headed to WIPP from the Los Alamos National Laboratory further north in New Mexico. Texas initially agreed the 582 drums could stay at WCS for a year, a deadline that has been extended multiple times. The latest period ends on Dec. 23, 2020.

Over time, the Energy Department has removed over 80% of the drums, but 113 remain. Some of these could pose the threat of overheating, similar to the Los Alamos drum that caused the WIPP leak.

The state informed the federal agency in November 2019 that it will not keep the TRU indefinitely.

A 2018 study commissioned by DOE offered multiple options for removing the remaining drums from WCS, such as treating it and repackaging it at the Texas location before sending it on to WIPP, or sending the material back to Los Alamos for future action.

White is scheduled Wednesday to testify on DOE’s fiscal 2021 nuclear cleanup budget before the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water. The Office of Environmental Management would receive $6.1 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, a steep drop from the $7.5 billion enacted by Congress for this year.