ECA Update, 9/30/24 —
In ECA’s transition paper to the next Administration, “Ensuring Long-Term Success: Recommendations for the Next Administration on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Mission” (https://www.energyca.org/publications), ECA provides multiple recommendations to tackle challenges the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) faces. A key challenge that the DOE-EM must address is ensuring there is sufficient safe and effective disposal capabilities and pathways for ALL classes of waste which DOE is legally required to dispose of. Without it, DOE cannot cleanup all EM sites.
This includes disposal of Greater-than-Class-C (GTCC) low-level waste (LLW). There is currently no disposal path for this material, which is impacting cleanup of EM sites such as the West Valley Demonstration Project (https://www.energy.gov/em/west-valley-demonstration-project-wvdp) in New York state, along with commercial nuclear power plants. The lack of a GTCC disposal site also has the potential to hamper EM’s use of its high-level waste interpretation, which can accelerate the cleanup of tank waste, given that some of the material that could be covered by the interpretation will require such a disposal pathway.
Read the full article here.