The Energy Department could store transuranic waste up to 10 years at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) cleanup site in Schenectady County, N.Y., under a hazardous waste permit it has requested from the state.
In early April, DOE submitted the application to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which expects to issue the draft permit for a 45-day public comment period in early 2019. A final decision could follow by the end of next year.
The Energy Department has two TRU waste containers and 22 containers of mixed TRU waste stored inside five Conex boxes, a type of shipping container, at the SPRU site. The waste was discovered in 2015 and 2016 and resulted from demolition and decontamination of SPRU’s H2 and G2 buildings.
The mixed waste contains both hazardous waste and radioactive material, said New York state DEC spokesman Rick Georgeson in a Friday email. The allowed waste storage volume sought in the application is 24,600 gallons, which converts to approximately 122 cubic yards, he added. The waste came from equipment, system components, residues, and other material at the buildings.
The waste has been stored at SPRU under a series of 30-day notices but, within the past year, the state instructed DOE to file for a hazardous waste permit.
The Energy Department has said it plans to store the radioactive and chemically hazardous waste at SPRU until off-site disposal is ready. Ultimately, the material should be shipped to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico by 2025.
Cleanup of the SPRU site, with exception of interim waste storage, is expected to wrap up this year. The contract for AECOM subsidiary URS Corp. is currently scheduled to expire at the end of August. URS and the Energy Department are engaged in a long-running arbitration dispute about a cost cap on the contract. AECOM Energy & Construction was listed in the waste permit application DOE filed with the state.
The Energy Department will not contest $31,000 in state fines for leaving certain waste too long in temporary storage areas without prior approval at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico.
The nuclear-weapon lab has 30 days from April 5 to take issue with a penalty proposed in a New Mexico Environment Department notice of violation, according to a DOE report. The state agency’s Hazardous Waste Bureau could fine LANL and contractor Los Alamos National Security (LANS) $10,000 daily for each instance of noncompliance, and conceivably even take court action to suspend the site’s hazardous waste permit.
A lab spokesman confirmed by email Tuesday the Energy Department will not fight the penalty being assessed for violation of LANL’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit.
The New Mexico Environment Department said in early April it planned to penalize the DOE facility for waste management infractions. Specifically, the lab had kept five containers of mixed-low-level radioactive waste and hazardous waste too long in temporary storage areas. Three containers were kept in a central storage area beyond the allowed 90-day limit. Two other containers remained in an area beyond the allowed one-year limit. Los Alamos had not sought any deadline extensions. The issue has not been finalized said NMED spokesperson Allison Scott Majure
The waste storage infractions occurred after LANL suspended all waste shipments from Dec. 18 through Feb. 28, while it reviewed how it mislabeled a container of hazardous waste sent to contractor Veolia in Colorado for disposal. The break in shipments meant certain waste was stored longer than expected.
The Energy Department has said it is taking steps to prevent recurrence of such problems.
The Department of Energy has not fully analyzed the risk of certain types of accidents at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
In a March 27 letter to DOE, the DNFSB cited weaknesses in the safety planning conducted for the IWTU: These types of events could “require identification of safety-significant controls for protection of workers.”
The board finished reviewing the safety basis for IWTU in October 2017. Several risks identified during the process are characterized by DOE as “standard industrial hazards” and rely upon “site-wide safety management programs.” As a result, DNFSB said in the letter, IWTU’s safety basis doesn’t properly analyze some dangers.
Such events, such as carbon dust fires in a silo and oxygen displacement in process areas, could require additional controls, the DNFSB said.
The board also said the facility’s fire hazard analysis is too reliant on site-wide safety management programs to screen out hazards, and that doesn’t live up to DOE requirements. For example, a “carbon dust fire could spread to the adjacent mechanical area, potentially damaging the safety-significant components in that space,” the letter says.
At IWTU, the Energy Department has implemented some safety programs and controls intended to address potential hazards. The DNFSB said these efforts could be beefed up through better documentation.
“The Department has received the DNFSB letter,” a DOE spokesperson said by email last week. “It appreciates receiving the board’s perspective and will evaluate the information provided as the Department continues preparations at IWTU.” The board’s letter itself did not request a written reply from DOE.
The IWTU was completed in 2012 to treat about 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste are stored in underground tanks at Idaho, but it did not operate as expected. The Energy Department has spent years trying to fix the operational issues and hopes to start treating radioactive waste by the end of this year.
The Energy Department has to date been fined $3.6 million by the state of Idaho for failure to successfully start operating the facility, according to Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.
The DNFSB is an independent board within the executive branch, which gives recommendations and advice to the energy secretary about health and safety issues at DOE nuclear defense sites.
The public comment period on the scope of a supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) for the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) in New York state has been extended by a month, to May 25. The deadline for comments had been April 23.
The extension is being announced in an April 23 notice in the Federal Register signed by James Owendoff, the Energy Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management.
Once the location of a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, WVDP covers 200 acres within the 3,300-acre Western New York Nuclear Service Center in the town of Ashford. The full site would also be covered by the supplemental EIS.
The Energy Department and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) are extending the comment period to help determine the scope of what is covered in the EIS regarding decommissioning and long-term stewardship for the properties.
The state and federal agencies said Feb. 21 they were preparing the supplemental EIS under the National Environmental Policy Act. Three scoping meetings have been held since then in New York state.
The agencies expect to issue the draft supplemental EIS by the end of 2020. The original document was published in 2010.
A major issue the supplemental EIS will determine is what to do with certain facilities expected to remain at the site after completion of Phase 1 remediation by 2030. Contractor CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley has an 8.6-year, $461.4 million contract for West Valley decommissioning that runs through March 2020.
For more information, contact DOE document manager Martin Krentz at martin.krentz@emcbc.doe.gov.