The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory Situation

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory Situation

Click here to see the abbreviated version.

So have you heard that there has been improperly characterized waste that has been shipped to WIPP? Have you also heard that most of that waste has already been buried at WIPP? That's right... Improperly characterized waste has been accepted by WIPP and then buried in Panel 1 of WIPP. And now, the EPA has not only approved the system in which the waste had been characterized, but now INEEL is going to be able to continue using that system and increase the number of shipments they send per week.

Here's the Story

The excitement started on June 27th, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) verbally instructed the Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) to suspend all waste shipments from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL).

On July 9th, the EPA finally puts something in writing and sends CBFO a letter (see the letter here) which they state that they had found out that approximately 800 drums of waste from INEEL had not been properly certified. These 800 drums had either already been disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility or were still above ground at the WIPP Waste Handling Building (WHB).

This letter also stated that the reason the EPA had verbally instructed CBFO to suspend all waste shipments on June 27 was so that the EPA could perform a preliminary inspection on the equipment that was in question, the Waste Assay Gamma Spectrometer (WAGS) System. The EPA's preliminary inspection of the WAGS system was not complete until July 3rd.

These shipments that had been certified illegally by the WAGS system had been coming to WIPP for nearly six months. The EPA, who is the chief government oversight bureau, had had no idea about INEEL certifying their waste with the WAGS system, nor would they have found out except that they apparently overheard that there had been a problem at INEEL when they were at another site.

After hearing about this letter and finding out some more information by speaking to the EPA and other government agencies, Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico (NWNM) sent a letter to Secretary Peter Maggiore of the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) on July 13. This letter (see the letter here) made the request for immediate action to make certain that the waste storage limits of the Hazardous Waste Act permit. The permit only allows 280 drums of waste to be stored in the WHB and waste may only be above ground for a maximum of 60 days. The problem for WIPP was that 30% of their storage capacity was taken up by the 87 drums of waste from INEEL that could not be buried as per the EPA orders. This meant that either WIPP would have to slow down their shipments or they would violate the permit because too much waste would be above ground.

On the same day that we sent this letter to NMED, the EPA made notice to the public about the INEEL situation in the Federal Register (FR.) Please read EPA FR here. (It is in Adobe Acrobat format.)

That letter which SRIC and NWNM sent to NMED was also cc'ed to Dr. Ines Triay, Manager of CBFO. Dr Triay decided that instead of accepting that WIPP would be in violation of their time limit to hold waste above ground, and working with NMED in an attempt to find a way that they could work within the permit and fix this problem, asked NMED to allow them to violate the permit by giving them a temporary extension on both the time they were allowed to hold waste above ground and to increase the allowable areas which they could store the waste! (see the letter here)

A couple of days later, the EPA sent out a report that spoke to the preliminary results of their inspection of the WAGS system. In the report they state that the WAGS system was "reporting assay results that are comparable to the approved SGRS system." However the EPA does make an attempt to chastise CBFO's decision to resume shipments of WAGS-characterized waste. "... to allow INEEL to resume shipments of WAGS-characterized waste was both noncompliant and inappropriate." This report is still unavailable electronically, feel free to contact Scott Monroe of the EPA at 202.564.9712 to receive DOCKET NO: A-98-49, Item II-A1-28 (Waste Characterized Inspection Report EPA Inspection No. EPA-INEEL-7.01-24 of Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory) or contact Geoffrey Petrie here.

On July 23, SRIC and NWNM sent another letter to NMED Secretary Peter Maggiore. This letter (read the letter here) urging them not to approve the 90-day storage extension. Apparently the letter was appreciated and understood by NMED for four days later they sent a letter to CBFO denying them the extension, and requiring within five working days for CBFO to come up with a detailed plan on how they would not fall into noncompliance with the WIPP Permit.

On August 2, CBFO responded to NMED's demand to know how they would remain in compliance. They stated in their letter that they would begin shipping WAGS-characterized waste back to INEEL if EPA didn't lift its prohibition on disposing the waste at WIPP. Now this choice to send waste back to INEEL was simply the choice that CBFO made on their own, and not the only one available. NWNM firmly believes that waste being shipped from the generating site to WIPP is bad enough, let alone having the same waste returned to transport again! There were several options still available to CBFO to avoid the conclusion to send the waste back to INEEL, but those options would have been more time consuming, and would have slowed down their retrieval process, and as we have seen time and time again safety is not the concern of choice for WIPP, the bottom line is simply economics and politics.

Following the CBFO letter to NMED stating that they would begin shipping WAGS-characterized waste back to INEEL on August 3, the "WIPP Coalition" sent a letter (read the letter here) to the EPA requesting four major items:

1. Extend the public comment period for at least 30 days and ensure that needed documentation is available during that extension.
2. Withhold making final determinations about the WAGS system, its implementation, and what to do with the drums characterized by the WAGS system until EPA fully considers all comments urging the extended public comment period.
3. Require CBFO to explain the discrepancy between its statements that it first learned of the use of the WAGS system on June 20, 2001 and the clear evidence in the docket that its officials knew, or should have known, at least at the time of the May 1, 2001 surveillance that WAGS was being used.
4. Make available for public comment DOE and EPA evaluations of how drums could be characterized for more than six months using an uncertified process and what measures DOE and EPA will take to prevent the recurrence of such a situation in the future.  EPA should evaluate both procedural and rulemaking changes to address the situation.

What followed was on August 10th, the EPA replied to our letter and stated that they would not give us an extension on comments. And on August 15th, the EPA turned around and approved the WAGS system for the INEEL waste stream.

The Bottom Line

So you may be asking yourself what the big deal is about all of this. The big deal is that over a period of several months INEEL was illegally using a characterization technique for waste that they were shipping to WIPP. WIPP continued to accept the waste even after they knew something was not right, and they did not inform the proper agencies to the problem, as was their legal requirement to do so. When the proper agency (i.e., the EPA) did find out about the problem, they ran through their routine and instead of penalizing INEEL and CBFO, they gave them a gift by allowing them to continue using the WAGS system to characterize their waste stream. And EPA did so without providing an adequate opportunity for the public to comment on the situation! What we have seen, then, is that when DOE makes a blatant error in their activities, there are no repercussions for their actions.

WIPP has also sent out a Class 3 Permit Modification request to expand WIPP. Please see the sample letter that Southwest Research and Information Center has sent out for people to submit as comments to Mr. Steve Zappe of the NMED. For more information on the Class 3 Permit Modification, please see SRIC's information page on the subject.

Find archived WIPP articles here.

Find the current proposed Class 3 Permit Modification here. (this is on the WIPP web site and it is in .pdf format and it is also nearly 8MBs. If you don't have a broadband internet connection it may take you a while to download it.)