A representative for Battelle Memorial Institute said Thursday he is “eternally optimistic” the company will submit a zoning application to Spink County, N.D., for its proposed deep borehole nuclear wast storage field test.
Battelle spokesman T.R. Massey said that Wednesday’s third public meeting in Spink County was attended by about 150 people, including field test organizers and Nathan Sanderson, a representative for Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who has voiced his support for the project.
Battelle is considering multiple sites in Spink County after original plans for the test in in Pierce County, N.D., unraveled in the face of public opposition and formal rejection from the county commission. Residents there feared a successful test would lead to eventual storage of nuclear waste, a fear that has been expressed in Spink County.
Massey said the company is drawing up the proper language for a potential “special exception” zoning application before Spink County to “give everybody as much peace of mind to the fact there will be no nuclear waste during this test.”
“I cannot say 100 percent that we’re filing the application. We’re still meeting internally to talk about last night and what are the proper steps moving forward,” Massey said by telephone. “But I’m eternally optimistic.”
Spink County Commissioner Cindy Schultz said the body, which also serves as the Planning and Zoning Commission, will consider an application if and when it is filed. Officials have not formed an opinion on the potential project, she said.
The Department of Energy on Wednesday released a draft solicitation for a waste transportation contract that will combine services now provided for the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., under a pair of separate contracts.
Reserved for small businesses, the competitively awarded WIPP Transportation Services contract is a five-year, indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract that replaces the WIPP Transportation Services contracts held by CAST Specialty Transportation and Visionary Solutions, which respectively expire on Jan. 12, 2017, and July 27, 2017.
Transportation services for WIPP involve managing a local terminal and transportation and maintenance services, according to a DOE press release. The new contract will cover contact- and remote-handled transuranic wastes and mixed hazardous constituents, including polychlorinated biphenyls and asbestos between various DOE sites and WIPP.
In the Wednesday press release, DOE said it plans to host a pre-solicitation conference, site tour, and one-on-one sessions with interested parties the week of May 30. Those interested can register online.
WIPP is the only U.S. storage facility for the radio-contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste. The deep-underground mine has been closed since 2014 after an accidental radiation release and unrelated underground fire. The site is still set to reopen to waste shipments by mid-December, DOE has said.
The Nevada Department of Environmental Protection will provide oversight of the Energy Department’s waste management operations at the Nevada National Security Site for five years, under a $13 million DOE grant announced Tuesday.
Under the grant for “Programmatic and Regulatory Oversight, Monitoring and Analysis at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and Surrounding Locations,” the state agency will conduct programmatic and regulatory oversight of the DOE Waste Management Project at the site, DOE said in its press release. The intent is for the state agency “to perform various tasks that relate to the NDEP planning and regulatory authority, natural resource planning and management with the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and DOE Mission,” DOE added.
One of the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s smaller jobs, the Nevada cleanup has a roughly $50 million annual budget. The site includes legacy waste material from both above-ground and subterranean Cold War-era nuclear bomb tests.
The Department of Energy tacked on a new 25 cubic-yard uranium cleanup to a list of remediation projects at the Hanford Site’s 300 Area, according to a notice Monday from DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington state.
The contaminated soil, a patch of ground measuring 15 feet by 15 feet and known as the 600-403 waste site, was discovered in March 2015 by a worker being trained to operate a mobile gamma spectrometer, according to an official document known as an Explanation of Significant Differences. The document is dated April 14, 2016, but was released publicly Monday. There is about enough contaminated dirt at the site to fill two dump trucks.
The 300 Area covers 40 square miles along the Columbia River in the southeast corner of the former plutonium production site. Among the facilities operated there were six experimental nuclear reactors, according to DOE. Area 600-403 has been included in the cleanup, even though it is outside the boundaries of the Area 300 industrial complex, DOE and its partner agencies said in the Explanation of Significant Differences.
Like the rest of the Hanford Central Plateau cleanup, DOE’s Richland Operations Office will manage remediation of area 600-403. The prime contractor at the site, on the job through Sept. 30, 2018, under a 10-year, $7 billion cleanup deal, is CH2M Plateau Remediation Co.