The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an exemption to Nuclear Waste Partnerships. LLC to ship 2 boxes of transuranic waste from SRS to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. We wonder if this sets a bad precedent for future shipments of plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste to WIPP.
“Specifically, NWP requests an exemption from the requirements in 10 CFR 71.61, ‘‘Special requirements for Type B packages containing more than 105 A2,’’ (i.e., deep-water immersion test). NWP requests an exemption from the deep-water immersion test because the design of a TRUPACT–III package containing more than 105A2 has not been demonstrated to meet the deepwater immersion requirements of 10 FR 71.61, i.e., the package’s undamaged containment system has not been shown that it can withstand an external water pressure of 2 MegaPascal for a period of not less than 1 hour without collapse, buckling, or in-leakage of water”.
“The SLB2 [Standard Large Box 2] waste boxes have not yet been loaded into the TRUPACT–III packages and are currently sitting on a storage pad at SRS. The contents of each SLB2 waste box is primarily one-half of a decommissioned tank used to process Plutonium-238.”
See notice in Federal Register on November 20, 2019 of “Environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact; issuance”:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-11-20/pdf/2019-25121.pdf