New Mexico Secretary of the Environment David Martin raised one state rep's concerns today when he suggested the possibility of adding higher-level radioactive waste to a New Mexico facility.---
During a presentation before the interim Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee today, Martin presented the case for expanding the types of waste allowed at the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant in Carlsbad. Right now, WIPP allows transuranic, or plutonium-contaminated, waste at the site—some so radioactive that it can only be handled remotely, with machines. Spent fuel rods, which are even more radioactive, aren't accepted at WIPP—nor at any other US facility.
Previously, an underground disposal site for high-level radioactive waste was planned for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But its budget was zeroed out last spring—raising the question of where that waste would go instead.
Martin's PowerPoint also described miscellaneous radioactive waste currently disallowed at WIPP that could potentially be dumped there, solidified radioactive sludge and radioactive materials used in oil and gas exploration.
WIPP is an underground salt formation where radioactive waste is put into chambers and sealed away permanently about half a mile below the surface of the earth. It's currently about half full and is slated to close in 2030.
The federal act allowing such waste to be stored at WIPP disallows higher level radioactive waste and civilian waste, such as spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear energy plants. Right now, such waste is in limbo in sites throughout the country, awaiting a final resting place.
State Rep. Brian Egolf questioned Martin and LANL staff at the meeting about this idea.
"How do we know that this is not one step toward WIPP eventually becoming what Yucca Mountain was intended to be?" Egolf asked.
Egolf expressed concern about a "slippery slope" effect in which the parameters for WIPP waste acceptance are gradually expanded.
"It seems any step we take in expanding the mission makes it at least theoretically easier to say we've expanded the mission this many times, how about expanding it a little bit further to make it the kind of facility that takes fuel rods," Egolf noted.
In response to Egolf's question regarding whether it would be technically feasible to store such waste at WIPP, Martin said that it is currently unknown.
Rep. Donald Bratton expressed an opposite concern—that the US shouldn't be putting transuranic waste into permanent storage, where it can't be retrieved, in case we need it in the future.
"The reality is, we ought to be reprocessing spent fuel like they do in France, because we're an energy-consuming nation," Bratton said. "We built our economy based on cheap energy that's not cheap anymore."
As SFR reported in its print edition today, the use of recycled plutonium in power plants is fraught with both safety and financial obstacles. The Senate Armed Services Committee recommended not to fund a facility at the Savannah River Site that is integral to US production of such fuel, called MOX fuel. The House Appropriations Committee has called the MOX fuel program "beleaguered."
