The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board wants to forge a closer working relationship with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
In a Jan. 10 letter to DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Chairwoman Jean Bahr urged “a framework for more regular interaction” between the two entities.
A closer relationship would help the board as it reviews the Energy Department’s management and disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel, Bahr wrote.
The board, established through the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, advises Congress and the energy secretary on technical issues related to managing this radioactive material, Bahr noted in the letter. As a result, the 11-member, presidentially appointed panel has a longstanding interest in DOE’s “packaging, drying and storing SNF, as well as planning for transportation and disposal.” Only nine of the 11 positions currently filled.
The nuclear cleanup office is doing research at Idaho National Laboratory into handling and transport of aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel, much of it highly enriched uranium, according to a recent DOE presentation to the board. The Energy Department must also ultimately move high-level radioactive waste from where it was generated to a disposal site, whether Yucca Mountain, Nev., or somewhere else.
Currently, Environmental Management is launching a “broad range of research activities related to the management of aluminum-clad SNF” and development of a standard storage/disposal canister, Bahr said. But when the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board discussed this issue during a November meeting in Arlington, Va., the DOE office participation was modest –providing only one overview presentation of its work on the canister.
The board “suggests that more regular interaction with DOE-EM at a senior management level would help us better plan for DOE-EM participation” in the future, Bahr said in the letter. She further proposed that “staff-to-staff meetings” would be a good start.
Bahr offered to talk with either by telephone or meet with While at Energy Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. There was no immediate word Wednesday on whether the parties have been in touch since the letter.
