The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is still “considering potential enforcement action” against the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch for failure to move stranded drums of transuranic waste out of Waste Control Specialists’ facility in Andrews County, a commission spokesperson said last week.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management wrote the state July 11 and expressed its “commitment to safely removing” the remaining 74 containers of potentially combustible waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Texas commission spokesperson Gary Rasp said in an email.
The DOE continues to work on a project to have Waste Control Specialists (WCS) design and install a radiological-control enclosure at the West Texas site between now and spring of 2023, DOE said in a March report to the Texas agency. The enclosure would provide a staging area to prepare the waste for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The DOE has yet to produce a timetable for moving the remaining containers, diverted to WCS in 2014 after a February accident that year at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. A drum from Los Alamos, with similar chemical traits to some diverted to WCS, overheated, ruptured and caused a radiation leak that contaminated parts of the underground. The disposal site temporarily closed after the accident and stayed offline for about three years.
The DOE “takes seriously its commitments to safely remove those containers from WCS and has been working diligently to do so,” William (Ike) White, the agency’s senior adviser for environmental management said in the July 11 letter.
The diversion to WCS was only supposed to be a short-term layover, according to DOE. But moving the waste became more problematic after it was learned some of the containers could, like the one in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant accident, be susceptible to overheating and ignition.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in May that keeping the drums stored at WCS through Dec. 31, 2024 should result in no significant environmental impact. The Texas commission’s approval, however, expired May 31 and had not been extended as of Monday.
There were initially 230 containers diverted to WCS and most were later shipped to the underground salt mine near Carlsbad after it was determined the drums were not a combustion risk, DOE said in a report sent to the Texas commission in March.
“All of the TRU waste containers that had been stored above ground have been removed from the WCS site and disposed of” at WIPP, White said in the July letter. “However, the TRU waste containers remaining at WCS — those in sub-surface storage — are significantly more challenging.”
Before the waste can be moved, DOE must determine it is safe to transport, White said. “The analytical work necessary for that determination is underway and we are aiming to complete the technical basis for that decision in the next few months,” White said in the letter.