March 17, 2014

WASTE CONTROL SPECIALISTS SAYS RIGHT TO DISPOSE OF DU JUST MONTHS AWAY

By ExchangeMonitor

Waste Control Specialists said yesterday that it expects Texas state regulators to approve a license amendment by June that would allow the company to dispose of depleted uranium wastes at its commercial waste disposal facility in Andrews, Texas. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality “has determined that they’re going to go ahead and give us the amendment, based on the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft Branch Technical Position on concentration averaging] and our performance assessment, to give us 10,000 cubic meters of DU disposal for the compact facility and federal facility,” Ken Grumski with WCS said at a panel at the Waste Management Symposia yesterday. However, Grumski said that WCS has no current contracts to dispose of such waste.

WCS will receive the permission to dispose of DU at its commercial facility, however, DU disposal is most interesting to the Department of Energy as it seeks a solution for the large amounts of the waste at its two DUF6 conversion plants at the Portsmouth and Paducah sites. Though WCS’ federal disposal facility has been constructed and is ready for operations, no contracts for disposal have been awarded to the site thus far. Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Disposal Operations Christine Gelles pointed out at the Symposia yesterday that the financial benefit of seeking commercial DU disposal for some companies, like uranium enricher URENCO based just a few miles from WCS’ facility, can enrich uranium and get the federal government to take title to it and be responsible for disposal. The benefit of getting the ability to take DU, then, will come when the federal facility finally opens, and that won’t happen until DOE releases its nationwide LLW/MLLW prime contract for disposal, which is expected in early March. Depleted Uranium was a contract line item in the draft of that prime contract but Gelles would not comment yesterday on whether or not DU would appear in the final version.

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