WASHINGTON, D.C. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) recent order categorizing depleted uranium as “low-level” radioactive waste does not solve the waste disposal problems of a multinational consortium that wants to build a nuclear fuel plant in southeastern New Mexico, said citizens’ groups Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). The groups today filed a motion in their pending case against Louisiana Energy Services (LES)the company seeking a license to build the plantmaintaining that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) does not have the capacity to accept LES’s waste for processing and disposal.
NRC rules require LES to come up with a “plausible strategy” for the disposition of the depleted uranium waste that would be produced by its plant. One of the disposal strategies identified by LES is transfer to the DOE. But U.S. law requires depleted uranium to be classified as “low-level” radioactive waste by the NRC as a necessary condition for DOE to take the waste.
“Simply calling this waste ‘low-level’ does not change the fact that the DOE has its hands full with its own wastemore than 700,000 metric tons of it that will take at least 25 years to process,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s energy program. “LES still has no plausible strategy to dispose of this waste.”
The groups further allege that the DOE has a poor track record when it comes to radioactive waste disposal, citing the department’s failure to meet the terms of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which require it to establish a national high-level waste repository and accept utilities’ irradiated nuclear fuel for disposal. The DOE has yet to even submit an application to the NRC for a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
“The uncertainties of a DOE option are such that it could not be considered a credible or plausible strategy,” assert Public Citizen and NIRS in today’s filing. The motion also charges that LES’s cost estimates for waste disposal and decommissioning of its facility are insufficient and unsupported.
“The unique hazards presented by depleted uranium waste and the strong likelihood of licensing difficulties and delays could drastically inflate decommissioning and disposal costs,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. “LES has failed to adequately account for these factors.”
Included in the motion is a discussion of the uniquely harmful toxic and radioactive properties of depleted uranium, a waste the groups assert is most comparable to transuranic or Greater-Than-Class C wastes, which generally are not suitable for shallow land disposal.
Public Citizen and NIRS argue that uranium should be seen as a kind of “radioactive lead” in which the damage from alpha radiation may occur “in conjunction with heavy metal induced damage to produce various health problems at low levels of exposure”especially in children. The groups suggest that the possibility of near-surface disposal of the waste is unacceptably risky.
“A facility on the scale and of the kind of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico would be required to properly contain the disposed waste,” said Hauter. “The NRC should evaluate the site-specific conditions of such a disposal scenario.”
While the Commission, in its recent ruling, argues that depleted uranium is low-level radioactive waste, it does not base this classification on the physical properties or dangers of depleted uraniumin fact, the Commission admits that depleted uranium may need to be disposed of “by methods more stringent that near-surface disposal,” which may dramatically increase the disposal costs projected by LES. They agree with Public Citizen and NIRS that a definitive conclusion on the proper disposal pathway cannot be determined at this time and may require “further environmental or safety analysis.”
“The NRC has clearly shown in this ruling how arbitrary its categories of radioactive waste classification are,” said Mariotte. “It seems that the Commission can decide willy-nillyand at the convenience of industrywhat category it wants to put depleted uranium waste in. Merely applying labels to waste does nothing to change the fact that this company has no solid plan for disposing of its waste.”
Public Citizen and NIRS maintain that LES has not presented a plausible strategy to dispose of its depleted uranium waste, and the groups will argue this point at a formal evidentiary hearing before an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board scheduled for October. The groups will argue their environmental contentions before the Board this February in Hobbs, New Mexico.