Waste Control Specialists (WCS) has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to keep stranded transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico for an additional two years.
The Dallas-based company asked NRC for an extension until Dec. 23, 2020, to allow the state of Texas, the Energy Department, the NRC, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to come up with the safest option for disposing of the waste, which has been kept at the WCS facility in Andrews County, Texas, since 2014.
The waste was to have been disposed of at DOE’s Waste isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, but was redirected to Texas after the facility closed following a February 2014 radiation release. After the shipment arrived at WCS, the Energy Department discovered some of it came from the waste stream responsible for the WIPP incident. The DOE waste disposal site didn’t resume normal operation for about three years.
Most of the Los Alamos waste that went to WCS has since been shipped on to WIPP. Of the 277 drums remaining at WCS, 113 consist of waste that with indications of combustibility or corrosion akin to the problem drums from LANL
“The final disposition plan for this waste will not be completed before December of 2018,” Jay Cartwright, an environmental safety and health director at WCS, said in an Aug. 30 letter to Marc Dapas, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. The NRC staff will make the decision prior to expiration of the current authorization on Dec. 23, agency spokesman David McIntyre said by email Monday.
Provided NRC approves the extension, WCS expects to make a similar request to its state regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, so both deadlines would be December 2020. The Texas authorization is also set to expire on Dec. 23 of this year.
In March 2017, DOE contracted Idaho-based SUNSI JV, to study disposal options for the stranded waste. The report was to analyze a number of options: stabilizing the material at WCS and shipping it to another DOE site for treatment before eventual shipment to WIPP; no treatment at WCS but shipping it back to Los Alamos for treatment; shipping it to another commercial facility for treatment and shipment to WIPP; or simply shipping it straight to WIPP for disposal.
The Energy Department is believed to be reviewing the study.