How will the cap over the buried nuclear waste cells – a by-product of cesium removal from high-level nuclear waste in the SRS tanks – perform and when will it leak?
“The main key message from this OOV was that the NRC staff did not identify the need for any new monitoring areas or any new monitoring factors at this time. However, the recently provided DOE information from May 2018 about the new design and performance of the engineering cover, which is expected to be constructed in about 20 years, is expected to make the cover an extremely risk-significant element of the DOE demonstration of meeting the performance objectives. As such, the NRC will review the new information and, if need be, then open up new high-priority monitoring factors.”